[Autumn]

I apologize in advance to Dev for have created so many threads as of late, I've recently started picking up playing the game again and I think this is the last issue thats been brought to my attention as of late.

While I don't think Martial Artist requires any buffs to make it better at what it does already, a common complaint often heard is often the vast quantities of FP Regen and Max FP you need to utilize the class is outrageous, while in some cases like Monk a lot of its FP costs are justified, in others where you're trying to perform simple mundane kicks or punches just for damage they can add up quickly and exhaust you of FP before you've even killed your target.

I do ask one would read over my arguments in the rest of the post as they will go into my (hopefully convincing) argument, but for the sake of appearing concise I'll spoiler the rest of it and provide a TL;DR afterwards.

The reason why this is a thing NOW is because overall defensive measures to autohits have beefed up significantly over time, it all happened around the time that Evasion was introduced as a global effect for dodgy builds that MA started to suffer because of it, Boxer and Verglas especially in this case. Dodge builds also received a permanent and powerful up time dodge buff towards autohits (Mirage Walk) because autohits do not seem to consume the status.

Its for this reason that Martial Artist classes focusing solely on just the martial arts, like Kicking and Punching instead of throwing fireballs into the sky or beams of light out of their hands are suffering just a little bit, after doing quite a bit of testing on non-monk MAs you will exhaust yourself of FP against any opponent, but against tanks and extremely evasive builds its aggravating to see that you'll only ever deal 40-50% of their health in sustained damage , with very little burst outside of the shenanigans you can pull with Monk.

This thread is aiming to fix a lot of the issues that Boxer and Verglas currently have, where in they need to build a massive amount of FP and be paired with a class that gives them FP Regen possibly as well in order to be viable while throwing out punches/kicks so they don't just auto-lose matchups because their opponent had more DR and effective health than they had effective skills to throw out.

I think its unfair to gate MA behind FP Costs now, especially when sword/axe/spear builds can pump even more damage than MA could ever hope to muster for even cheaper FP costs at much farther ranges to boot, it pretty much makes the only viable MA one who basic attacks or is a Mage, that is all you will see nowadays when someone claims to be punchy punchy.

So at the very least lets help them punch and kick to their heart's content, I'll provide some examples of what I had in mind:

Verglas:
-Bear and Hare tree kicking skills are lowered to 11/12/13/14/15 FP Cost (Rapid Kick/Face Stomp/Axe Kick/Point Kick/Cold Front/Rising Kick)
-Verglas Fox skills are lowered to 40/38/36/34/32 FP Cost (Expanding Ice/Crawling Spikes/Icicle Spear respectively.)

Boxer:
-Boxer's Korkenzier/Regenschauer/Sturm Shreik/Orkam Drehen should have their FP Costs lowered to Felhook's level (30/26/24/18/14 FP)
-Boxer's Grandupper/Felsmenage should be lowered to 40/36/32/28/24 FP

Monk:
-Monk's Close range kicking skills (Sky Charriot/Dense Thunder) should be lowered to 11/12/13/14/15 FP Cost

TL;DR:
-Since the introduction of Evasion, MA is suffering a bit in managing to kill its opponent before its FP runs dry.
-MA Autohits will inherently deal less damage and have often have much shorter range than counterpart martial weapons.
-Martial Artists cannot even compete against tanks without the aid of Monk, which has Range/FP Sustain/HP Sustain/Burst etc.

Thanks for reading and consideration in the future.

[Fern]

I must say that in all the time I've been playing, I've -personally- not seen many MAs that aren't Monks. Actually from what I've seen, the most commonly played MA promos go Monk > Boxer > Verglas, the last one being the most uncommon from the three I've listed in my experience.

From what I've understood it's mainly due to the FP costs. Monk has a skill with FP regen, and so does Boxer (albeit not as good as the former) but Verglas doesn't have anything like that, unless you're taking the base class's Meditate into account. And even then it's a very slow regen for a promo that burns FP like mad.

I guess you could argue 'just pair up Verglas with Evoker main class for Absorb Power' but if you -need- another class to make one reliably function... well, I don't think that's very fun, is it?

So I'd say changing the FP costs to something lower is fine, even for the other promos. But I think Verglas needs it the most.

[K Peculier]

I agree with all the FP adjustments. Monk in general has been dominating the martial artist scene due to more or less being a fist mage and having an amazing sustain for their FP in general. The other classes need some love.

[Snake]

Boxer's reason to have high FP costs was their equally high damage, which was nerfed. Verglas' high FP cost was a relic of Pre-GR because of how its damage used to be high outside of Fox Style.

Both are crappy now because of their unmatched cost vs efficiency.

While I would be more for letting their damage go up to re-justify the costs, tweaking their FP costs down is also plausible.

I also believe the minimum scaling for fist autohits should be 130%. Let's be real. They don't have Two-Hand or gimmicky scalings like 110% SKI or 50% STR/CEL, ugh. They solely use STR.

[Autumn]

While I would be more for letting their damage go up to re-justify the costs, tweaking their FP costs down is also plausible.

I'm just gonna single this out for a moment because I do have a bit an opinion on this, while it does seem nice on paper to just do more damage, I personally would just like to be able to punch and kick without having to worry if I'll go dry on FP by round 4, thats all my concern is currently, built right I think a SWA fist is able to pump out enough damage.

It'll also help out these classes severely in PvE I might add, so they don't just run dry either and become useless for a few fights.

[Shujin]

Another way for Verglas to Keep its combo mentality and Stances idea up (Aside from the long overdue rework it needs)

-Give Chimera Stance the Sacred Art treatment, meaning once you trigger Chimera stance in a round your next move of another tree is free. Helps a bit with letting your Combos flow.

-Make the stances not only give the +1 power per rank but also reduce their FP costs by -1 per rank. More reasons to pick the stances over raw stats that ain't as good as they used to be pre-GR, but thats only a band-aid at best and I much more prefer an overwork of their stances in general to give them some personality back.


Fully agree though on the costs being way to high for a combo class with the lack of sustain options they have. WIL is for punchers usually a dead stat (unless pairing with a magic class of course) and I find myself building tons of WIl anyway and still can't handle the sustain when I actually begin using verglas stuff. Gods have mercy when your opponent can also sustain in a way, often outhealing the damage oyu can even dream to dish out.

I'd really love skills though that use the ice on the ground for a variation of skills, as they ar elore wise supposed to be extra strong in ice areas. I can easily see an Ice tiles absorbtion skill that turns nearby Ice tiles to FP or a passive that does that in a weaker rate granting you FP regen while standing in an ice tile sourounded area.

[Senna]

Maybe I should be the 'Wait nah its gonna be too broken' but after seeing how well it is with classes like DH, the MA classes needs some fp reduction love because their skills cost too much for what they're really doing. This is part of the reason why people will run other classes and use DH as a martial-arts class instead.

As it is now, even 350 fp is like 3-4 rounds worth of offensiveness, when that is more than enough for standards.

I'm with the others on this one, please reduce this cost to fit the modern skill cost. Perhaps people will actually start using them.

[iStabOreos]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with the statements listed here too, MA's (mainly Boxer and ESPECIALLY Verglas) needs more FP to sustain or lowered cost if anything. Even monk to a certain degree needs this because you can only sustain so much with power up.

[WaifuApple]

Aye. I can certainly agree that Verglas and Boxer especially need some FP relief thrown their way. I rarely see a Verglas not just used for expanding ice, or a boxer not just used for Geist.