What would be your reaction to someone using mana recharge in a party?

Disclaimer : I am not an experienced player at all.

I was following this thread for a while, trying to learn something out of the discussion.
I just checked what 'Mana recharge' does on Coryn club, and it doesn't sound too useful.

If it was a 500 MP cost skill that took time to charge, and then in an AOE gave 700 MP to your party excluding you, it might have been appealing.

This is from my previous experiences with fast paced games, Heal over time/buff over time is not as good as all in one go. However, I might be misinformed of the situation in Toram, so please don't take my words too Personally.

 

If you really hate to lose all that buff with a single poke.
Rather than sub katana, why not try main katana support? Or main agi dex dw support.
They have great invisible skills.

 

Yeh, I can see that for sure. But people talk like Iruna skills are better at least. The combat system and the skills being good don't always match.

 

It isn't really that hard to maintain the buffs with katana sub. You can even take tenryu just to have zannou for emergencies. Triple thrust and assault attack could be used for closing in on enemies. Since it's a very unusual build right from the start, it's not weird seeing those two skills.

The main charm of it is the range. Which makes it very easy to keep MP up. You can even go as far as using gsw, but that makes you like a disposable wipe. It's like having three dps in a party and one of them being a support in disguise. Of course, the downside is still clear. You're squishy no matter what.

 

Yea mana recharge is one of the not so great aura alongside life recovery(if i recalled the name correctly). But it is quite useful and often used by storm farmers even with the reduced damage. But for a boss battle the prospect isn't that great.
I would like it if bow users use magic barrier for 20% damage reduction. It'd really help the tank. And the penalty is only dodge rate reduction

Yea having quick motion feels amazing, but the ampr penalty made it quite unattractive for physical based classes to use. Mages needs to be amped up even further.

 

To be fair, this sounds fine in theory. Sadly, I will use a bit of anecdotal evidence so you are free to just ignore this. Yesterday I was in a party of full CF as a tank. One of the CFs did barely any damage in comparison to the other two CFs. The other two CFs complained about the third CF that did no damage. The CF that did little damage was kicked from the party. Now apply this to a support CF, that is unlikely to do any damage because their mana is being dumped into casting support skills and not into damage. Support skills need time to be seen as effective. On top of that, the support tree is a limited AOE you have to be next to the other party members. Also, does the MP recharge rate of support tree really provide that much MP in a 30-45 second time span to even make a difference, assuming that you can get all of the party members with the same aoe bubble? I think you are failing to understand that time of a fight is a huge component on determining if a support char is a useful over a DPS.

The Quote, "i see little to no difference between the two, and if that little difference is so significant, then putting Decoy Shot on smite must be an op game changer." is probably one of the worst arguments I have ever read on this forums lately. For someone that is an expert at this game and well experienced, this is quite a disappointment. A support character takes a party member slot of a team, Decoy shot does not. Decoy shot, does not go away if a party member gets hit. Decoy shot can be reduced to 1 mp using a combo, support skills can not. Damage is also a function of efficient and effective MP usage. MP can be seen as the potential of how much damage you can do. Putting smite on Decoy shot does not mean you will do more damage in comparison on casting another CF buff or another snipe. As a DPS, you use MP on skills that will do the most damage or skills that directly buff your damage. Decoy shot is quite an OP skill, to the point that a majority of builds are willing to sink quite a few skill points to obtain it.

Hell, in the gold coin event I would rather put smite on my decoy than bring another support char. impact->smite(decoy)->smite(finale); A 4MP combo. Pretty much equal in terms of MP cost to just hard casting decoy shot. With the MP regen ability of decoy shot, this is not a problem. Using more anecdotal evidence, I know some bow users that literally just hard cast decoy

1) I agree that you should not lose your buffs when you get it. I also believe that is a stupid mechanic, but I doubt aso will remove something like that thats been in the game since the creation. So I was providing a happy medium I guess, since ad-lib exists.
2) minstrel and dancers are pretty good to be honest. Using them together with a chakra skill (I think), can provide a stupid amount of mp for a team. The best part, they do not have to be with in a certain AOE range. Something to look into.

 

i don't have lv200+ player craft gear and lv10 food. and i don't consider those things as normal or ordinary.
whatever you have, you i don't, and based on my ranking scores in the anniversary arena i'm still above-average.
i'm trying to see stuff from the average perspective, with skills and equipment appropriate to the character's level.
cross fire doesn't even reach 400k at this point, mana supply is vital and 1 person dealing 50k less damage (which can be compensated by another person casting 1 more skill) is not a huge trade-off.

i am the leader of my parties (because nobody wants to lead) so i am the one who decides those things. attitude and cooperation are far more important to me than the rest. i want a fair distribution of ranking rewards, so uncooperative players get the boot, no matter how strong they may be.
i don't fight battles where i wouldn't stand a chance, so i don't need to be grateful to them.
and if the loading screen/intro/outro/recovery time is longer than the battle time, i raise the difficulty or go alone.

without INT Mana Recharge generates 300mp in 36s, and also 300mp for everyone else in range. assuming they are all crossfire users, getting hit is bad for everyone, regardless of Mana Recharge. sticking close might be preferable; a safe spot is a safe spot, so why not share it?

sure, Mana Crystal could generate more, but it's restriced to magic-types and an INT build also generates more with Mana Recharge.
only Spirited Dance is better, but also has restrictions, not to mention it's exclusive rarity.

not that support skills are in a good shape, but there are worse skills out there.
(and this is still just about Mana Recharge, nothing else)

the last time suzuki openly talked about the game's development (with english subtitle upload) he said that he wants to change many of the old mechanics.
and they did a complete revamp of guard/evasion. combos are next, apparently.
just being able to use auras in a combo would already improve a lot.
Rampage originally also was uncomboable and now it is. Sanctuary is comboable, so that could be used as argument to grant the same privilege to all support skills.

 

Well, If something isn't Healthy for the game, or just directly KILL a class entire possibility of being useful, It should be removed and reworked Despite being "Original '''''''''feature'''''''''
asobimo Is ridiculously stubborn, that's the thing honestly. For some reason they think they need to put penalties on less liked classes fearing they become OP, While Dual can just spam Shinning Cross and have 2 Invencible skills, One 90% damage reduction and 1 Revive for literally Zero penalties xD

They choose their golden childs to be crazy good, and pretend that they need to "Be caREfuL NoT TO BroKE ThE ClaSs" whit the rest..
Example: Katana can literally solo anything with 2 I-frame skills which do High Dps, have 100 free critical, 50 ampr, atk speed green bar trashed with tenryu, and no penalties other than you need to be good.
Knuckles has a ampr skill that vanishes, annihilator buff kills your stability (less damage), Godhand doesn't do shit or have at least one I-frame, to get more atk for DPSign you need the new Knuckles that kill your critical chance. aaaalll these penalties just to be the least damaging member of the PT xD

assholbimo 100%

a Veteran is not only someone with end game rich ass gears, You can be a vet simply by having a lot of Knowledge gathered from years of playing.
I consider myself a Veteran because of Knowledge mainly, and I just started getting to a "Richer" State, My knowledge of this game from 4 years is what counts the most. at least 'In ma Pinion.' (and Yes, Getting to ''rich'' gear does count as a vital part of knowledge, But I don't think it's the biggest most important one)

Hum.. 300MP in 36 seconds.. I believe a DPS Katana could generate more than 2000mp in the same time or more.. not even counting Decoy Online.. just sain~ >~<)

 

You claim your not an expert yet... You follow the streams, know quite a bit of inner workings of this game, have roughly 5K posts which is proof positive of the amount of threads you have participated in. Just because your bad at the game mechanically does not remove the status of being knowledgeable. I get what YOU would do in a party etc. You are quite different from what is happening right now in the anniversary gold coin event. Are YOU always going to be available to party with player that potentially wastes their skill points on MP recovery buff to carry through content. Likely no. Will the majority of other people? Probably not, the gold coin farming event is proof positive of this proposition. My argument has been, there is no need for support when a team of CF only DPS and one tank can kill the event and the majority of the content in Toram in 30-45 seconds. I find this to be a problem. Why are you giving the original poster hope that using this skill is going to allow him/her to not be kicked in a party. Your fundamentally providing bad advice.

300mp in 30 seconds is way to slow. That is not even a CF buff cast. Mind you this is assuming that all of the CF are huddled next to each other. Lets be real, have we seen anything like this in the anniv gold coin farm event, where all the DPS are nicely huddled together. Lets not even discuss about melee characters in your party, the impracticality of getting the melee and ranged dps to be in range of your limited AOE buff. Hell Spirited Dance generates more mana than that and you do not have to worry about being hit to lose it. Also you do not have to "stick close" as you do with support skills. Additionally, there are no negative draw backs.

Spirited Dance with 10 skill points.

1) First cast 100mp to everyone. at 10 points you have 5 stacks. 14s duration.
2) Wait until the 5 second mark recast. 5->6 stack. 200 mp to everyone. cast immediately afterwords consume 1 stack 6->5 100mp to everyone. In roughly half the time you have generated 400mp. 100mp over this support skill.

Additionally you can combo dancer skills, which you can not do with support skills.

ad-lib->save(spirited dance)->smite(finale). 1mp combo to give everyone mp. (technically free, just 1mp to start casting)

 

Let's take a while to see each other's point of argument, Fox said mana recharge is something "cool" to have and not necessarily a waste of skill points nor party slot as he is only talking about mana recharge strictly and not a full support overall. Mana recharge will give your party a benefit and when it gets canceled you'd simply get your 25% damage back.

And then I take it that you're saying mana recharge is something of a liability in the party because the mp recovery doesn't justify the usability because its taken off your damage potential with little return. Essentially similar to how a full support class takes up party slots. Which leads to getting kicked out of the parties because of it.

Then my opinion about it. On a 30-40 secs battles, between 2 and 3 dps I see no difference as the dps class are simoly so OP and the damage is honestly redundant.The rank system is flawed as it doesn't fully reflect your contribution, even the attacker rank, why? Because of the redundancy of damage one can't be sure they're doing damage contribution exactly as it shown, there are factors such as overkills, skill timing and something like proration. On multiple event bosses like the anniv arena, its especially noticeable, lets say the topaz boss moves around and is taken out by 2 members which do have adequate damage potential, then the other guy simply camp on the saphire and diamond bosses. The guy that camps on the 2 bosses would get attacker rank while the other two would have distributed contribution between 2 because they only attack one bosses, but the 2 arguably made the run faster compared to the guy that only camps on the 2 stationary bosses. This is what I mean by the attacker rank doesn't reflect overall contribution. On shorter runs damage distribution does not matter as much as it is on longer battle.

Then lets talk about how much mana recharge worth both in short battles and long battles. In both short and long battles the mp that mana recharge gives can make difference when context and situation is taken into account. Lets say a member only need that one last bit of MP to cast another skill without having to do another auto attack be it with decoy or not decoy. The run could be 2-3 seconds faster with that extra 300mp over the duration of 30-40 secs. You could say that the 25% damage from the penalty would be more impactful than some extra mp, but I don't think mana recharge itself is a huge liability that's enough for parties to kick you out, as I mentioned about the flaw of the attacker rank. And then spirited dance, actually bow users can't use dancer skills, so thats one thing you overlooked, even if they can with an optimized party with perfect setup, you can use both spirited dance and mana recharge, its not the matter of either one to use. The tank can use warcry and spirited dance, the dps can use other supports like brave aura and of course, mana recharge. I like to use optimized party as a context on my arguments as it also give you the idea on what role can you do with each skills while removing redundancies. Best case scenario I'd say. I'd put mana recharge on "cool" status as I don't think its not a big liability nor huge boost, similar to what fox said between mana recharge and smited decoys: they're not something of a significance with their ups and downs.

On longer battles the arguments are different, longer battles actually drops the usability of that mp recovery and the 25% damage would become something more valued. This would allow a better reflections on the attacker rank as it limits the effect of overkill and AoE damage to the rank. The 25% damage penalty is just a big deal over longer battles, and it won't really be "cool" anymore.

Support skills are not created equal, some are good by itself, others needs a specific lineup to make them work and others are simply not worth to take. Mana recharge is something "okay" for me. Speaking of auras that bow users can use, instead of mana recharge, I'd like bow users to get magic barrier instead, or actually they can take both. Mages can actually use them all without much repercussions but if bow users can take the load off a bit then why not. In an ideal setup the buff sets would be something like this.
Tanks: guardian, warcry, aegis/protection, spirited dance
Mages:brave aura, quick motion and high cycle.
Melee users: not really required to use buff as they are better off spamming their attack skills, but they can use serum on their kairiki combo, not a big deal but its not bad either.
Bow users: Mana recharge, magic barrier, snipe debuff.

With cross fire, snipe and satelite arrow, they're not exactly spammable skill to get an optimized performance out of them. Auras are something that can be slipped in. Mana recharge is still a plus in a damage-redundant parties and optimized ones.

 

ASPD support is good

 

<sorry for my bad english, but I will try my best to explain my a little support experience.>

Some ppl are miss-understanding in what supporter can do.
Supporter must focus on boost up your dps output damange to maximum.
= just focus on buff and PRORATION! (do an auto attack as much as you can!)

I play gun+knuckle for my main as support. And for party mp recovey I use 3skills as below.
1) Mana recharge - loss 25% of atk power but we are not dps so nothing loss.
2) Chakra - 100 mp recovey, +15ampr and 50% dmg reduction buff for 30sec. (This is strongest MP recovery skill!)
3) Spirited dance - 200mp recovey every 10sec.

I can use Cross Fire + Satellite Arrow for semi dps or solo with my tank pet when party member off.

My status is 290 dex 250 vit so I have 3500 atk power and 25,000 hp.
I can be a semi tank, semi dps, support, breaker any role that my party want me to do. ^_^

People will love you if your supporter is a good DPS BOOSTER, for sure!

ps. I also have pet with buff skill lv10.
Edit: Tank also love me, because I can heal him fast. ^^ (Tanker don't need any revita.)

 

...why not chakra instead?

Its combo able, has infinite range and restores 50mp a pop along with damage reduction. Also boosts ampr which would be great for decoy shot.

Man a recharge is simply too slow to be used and provides no fast run benefits.

Basically, you only see use for mama recharge in even boss runs like that crazy cat Lady wizard.

So my reaction is: ಠ_ಠ

 

*Use mana recharge*
In my mind *insert dissappointment trumpet melody*

 

As for me i just go "I hope you have enough dmg to compensate the penalty"
If it life recovery though, i will go "Wtf man, are you trying to kill yourself"

Tbh, Lvl 10 first aid is enough for me as support
Just deal damage and go rev is someone down

 

Chakra uses up a lot more skill points and its an active skill, not off hand skill like auras so they're not exactly on the same category.

 

I've actually tested it with my hybrid bow build. I now conclude that it's basically a pain in the ass, a waste of skill point and pretty unreliable. If you cannot use Chakra, it is a so-so alternative. The time and mp used casting it is better used for a major burst damage, the damage nerf makes me feel like I'm one with the random pebble you can find in leveling areas. The MP regen is useful, but only situational. I'm better off auto attacking even if I'm affected with AMPR nerf from Quick Motion unless the AMPR becomes negative if I'm not using AMPR gears. You can notice it even more if you're the one carrying the entire team like superman carrying an entire plane. The idea is good, but in actual combat it's kinda... meh, if not so-so.

 

Actually, you can argue it being offended due to the ampr buff and shell like shield.

Mama recharge gives you a lot of negatives for a half--assed mp regen which goes away in one hit.

 

I think its still cool since its a half support. Still a bit weaker dps but with mana recharge.

I think support will shine when pvp comes out. Only if group battle would be possible though.