[PossumParty]

Heya everyone. Before making a big ol' thread on everyone's favorite worst class here, I just wanted to get a general consensus on things and take in any suggestions or ideas anyone may have on what to do with our poor Boxer boys. To start with, some general ideas I think most everyone has said before and agrees with.

SP Squish - As most older classes, our poor Boxer has a lot of skills that need a lot of points, but not enough to throw around. In total they have a whopping 68 points in their tree to spend. What do most of these happen to be? 32 total are offensive. It's not totally needed and you can make it work, but an SP squish on these offensive skills would be very nice to see.

FP Cost - Most of boxers skill cost a whopping 20-30 FP a cast, lord forbid you wanna use the same ability twice in a round. Usually about 25 FP per cast a round I'd say, you're usually using up 40-50 FP a round. If you got a geist to pop, thats probably 60-70 FP. If Boxer's FP regen options were better I wouldn't mind that much, but as it is? You use 50 FP every round, at 4 rounds? That's 200 already drained and gone, poor Boxer already running on fumes..

Sturm Woes - This is a game that lets you mix and match, create crazy and very cool class combinations. I've seen some amazing things from what people have been able to combine. But Boxer? Sadly, our class is rather.. selfish. If you use anything BUT a Boxer skill (and even some of them still take sturm), or a basic attack, you will be losing -2 sturm. Let's say your enemy dashed across the whole map. You could use Geist Drei, but due to SP reasons, most people don't run that option. How about Boxer's base class, Martial artist? What if I wanna Shikuchi and then basic movement? Oh.. that's a whole -4 sturm. Generally, unless you get lucky with geist (or do no damage and spam Regenschaeur?) you're generally going to get 1-2 sturm a round. And if you use literally any other class, EVEN their base class, you lose it all just like that, regardless of the momentum cost.  Charge? -2. Shikuchi? -2. 1m guard? -2. Playing Boxer can be absolutely brutal with how selfish it is at times, you can't even use your own base class if you want to play Boxer! Why?! No heaven kick, geldoren, meditate, crane hopping, shikuchi- You may use these one single time at the start of the fight, or after a finisher (if you can get up to the sturm for it..) but that's it. And I'm not even talking about your SUB class here. Boxer is so selfish, it only wants to play by itself and practically forces you to run passives for it.

To fix that, I'd say to allow basic movement and Martial Artist skills to not cost any sturm. Is allowing someone to Shikuchi + Heaven Kick or Meditate and not lose all their sturm stacks going to break the game? I don't think so. I'd also say for any skills under 3m to not take any sturm either. There's a few, even if rare, it would be incredibly nice. Backflip, guard, charge? DH's or Verglas' doing their combos and keeping the bit of sturm they have? Sturm only increases Boxer's own skill damage anyway.

Diagonal Movement - So.. how to counter a boxer? It's rather simple. You simply move one space diagonal of them. The terror, the raw fear! What is boxer's answer to this simple move? Losing -2 sturm to reposition yourself. Or.. Orkam, which is also -2 sturm. All of Boxer's offensives are only in melee range, or, in a single line. Geist movement? Nope, you're forced to move at least 3 tiles, 3-6, and only in a straight pattern. You can literally be directly next to a boxer, just in a diagonal space, and it is such a power move. It breaks them.

Solution? As above, basic movement not taking any sturm or MA's skills not doing so would solve this. Another idea I like also is like the modern classes. Bard gets some fancy movement, not forced to move in a single line. I'd like Geist to be the same way like that, able to move diagonally too. And not limiting geist to forcefully having to move 3-6 squares, why not 1-6?

Ghastly Geists - Armed with the right knowledge, what can a player do? Absolutely bypass geists entirely! For 3m you just spent 20 fp and moved 3-6 spaces, woohoo! Most players nowadays bypass geists completely. It's already a 50/50 guessing game, but that's the neat interaction of the skill. Did you just dump 3 momentum into the dumpster or are you gonna hit that jackpot and catch them off guard? It's one of my favorite skills in the game, I love the interaction of it. Anytime someone guesses right on me, I'm happy either way! Or- you could just use all the generous amount of skills in the game that ignore it completely. I'd seriously love for more geist interactions to be in the game, bar AoE's as you're not targetting the boxer really. But that spell or skill that shoots off in a single line, only able to hit one target? Yup, you guessed it, ignores geist completely. Why? Holy Arrow, Needler off the top of my head. Mage spells. I don't want Geist to be too overbearing or obnoxious and work on everything, but it really sucks to shoot 3 momentum down the drain and get nothing in return. No one is gonna win in a fight with 4 momentum versus someone that has 7(god forbid they have fleur which most everyone does).

Solution - more Geist interactions, barring AoE's, but I'd like to hear more thoughts about this. I was even thinking of having Geist not give you 3M in return for allowing it to work on practically everything but that might be too punishing. You soak up someone's attack if it pops, get free movement, and get 2 sturm total for +10% damage. Would that be too punishing? Let me know your thoughts.

Fighting Pace - An absolutely abysmal skill. When you end turn, with a minimum momentum of 3, you get FP back. 10 FP. For 3 momentum. Boxer has so much SP requirements that I have never seen someone use this whatsoever. Let alone ending their turn with straight up 3 momentum. I have a few ideas for this to actually get some usage.

Why not for every sturm lost, they get.. 5 FP back at least? A decent way to keep yourself in a fight even if you're punished and lose sturm. Could also just be general FP recovery even if a bit boring, or maybe small return on boxer skills used? But I like the first idea best.

Failing Felsmanege - Oh poor Felsmanege.. never used.. why? As a finisher you can create a bunch of rocky pillars around you! And.. have them all be jumped over right after! It seems like its trying to play off On The Ropes here but.. you just used your Sturm Finisher for +15% more damage. And if you have 8 sturm.. that's 40% damage you just lost. So.. why use it? And most people just jump past it anyway.

For me, I LOVE the idea of what it's going for here, it just needs to be fully implemented (if possible). A boxer needs its boxing ring. I'd love for the pillars to be impassable objects, not haunted over or blinked over. Gotta stay in the ring with the bull. Or maybe some interactivity perhaps? Playing off the 'ropes', maybe something like Ymir. Knockback someone into the pillar, they take 150% earth damage.

Thank you all for coming and taking your time to read this, I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas! Generally I'd love Boxer to get a big sweep of changes and I might think of some ideas after this thread. Actual class combos would be pretty great! Grappling someone into a big suplex slam, maybe some grappling moves. Perhaps charged up moves. Use a skill enough, it gets powered up? Or combo'd with another for a special move? Or something like Monk with their slick moves. Sky Chariot gets a big bonus to someone already KD'd, does even more damage and immobilizes the. A cool combo.

[renowner]

Well, I hate the fact that certain skills seem to break all forms of geist, like pulling shot. Haven't tested in a bit, but I recall basic attack skills being able to do that kind of thing. I also think Schturm being so. . . Restrictive hurts the class's fun factor a whole great deal. Though with how strong Schturm can get, it does worry me if it gets too easy to spam.

However, I think movement and martial arts skills not lowering schturm would be fine. Movement for sure is a huge unfun and unnecesary debilitation for boxers. Its not like aquamancers lose aquae crest when they cast non aqua spells.

The geists are hit or miss. I don't really want to completely remove their ability to counter, because then things just get more homogenous, and boxers lose their main stand out identity. But I -would- like for them to be more consistent, so that the whole identity of 'boxers having to think ahead and understand the opponent's movements before they happen, for ease of countering' remains true.

[Ray2064]

Something something
You also lose Sturm for using a fucking -item-

[Poruku]

geists are far too powerful of an effect to be balanced right now. If there wasn't ways to circumvent it boxers would dominate. I think geists should apply to everything but also should not give momentum, only cancelling the effect

[FatherCrixius]

hi homie, cool thread

To preface, I've played a fair amount of this class, and feel I've had the most success* from boxer out of anyone. The class has a number of weaknesses, many of which fundamental, and some recent. I do not think radical changes to boxer would result in a more fun class, or necessarily a better one, despite the reasons you provide. Rather I'd describe it as suffering in all the ways other martial artist promos [excl. ice mage] and all of the other SWA based physical classes do, in that;

• Fists are now suffering a 20+ swa nerf from rebellion.
  
• These auto-hit based classes were balanced around evasion being a 30% Damage reduction. Having a whole new stat introduced to it's statline causes massive stat voids elsewhere.
  
• Dev's coding on the new classes skills almost unanimously ignore geist, due to the tile targeting exception to Zwei. 
  

Concurrently these changes leave boxer 40 points out of pocket, and 15 - 30 swa down depending on the build. This is an issue for boxer specifically, as a 120 SWA fellhook will deal negative damage to even squishy enemies, leading to Asura's fist having joint scaling being the actual highest damage and most resisted attack. This was an issue I had on king even before GR2, with a 203 fellhook @145 swa, and an unintentional 250+ base asuras fist. These are strictly numerical tweaks.

• Fists need buffs.
  
• Swa exclusive scalings need buffs (Universally imo), or Elemental attack scalings nerfed (Again, universally).
  
• GR2 needs adjustments. Some classes really hate building skill, and either need to be buffed elsewhere or will continue to be shit at everything to accommodate passable skill. Fellhooks nerf made this worse.
  

It's fundamental limitations are what I feel make the class fun. The linear orthodoxy of it's ranges and limitations on it's utility, usually schwarz costs, give it mechanical difficulty that is very rare in SL2 pvp. There is opportunity cost to using Orkam, Felsmanage (A little too much cost in it's case), and Grandupper that most classes only get simplified versions of. There is a kind of enjoyment that stems from you both operating under shared rules that alter the way both of you play, a term I would like to coin as 'Well designed game', that often breaks down into melee ranged dps racing vs Actual meta. Geists being litterally double edged swords that can be abused or abuse, Orkam having a repeatable pattern to it's tile pulls, or even Grandupper being amplifiable by standing behind the tile they land on are all core-mechanics that are esoteric yet unbelievably enjoyable, which is unfortunately an experience I've not had on any other class yet. I figure most if not all of the dumb shit that come out of this class to be that way from coincidence, and I would not like to see another roll of the dice on my favourite class truth be told.


*Two characters, King 2019 - 2022, Monoboxer. Crix Like 2016 ish? - 2019, Box Monk.