[Neus]

[float=left][/float]

We're back after a short break. This week's offering is a bunch of new class skills; every promoted class gets 1 new skill, and Rogue, the base class, also gets 1 new skill. Why Rogue? Well, I always thought that the class lacked a little bit of identity. Sure, it has some nice self-buffs, situational traps, and the powerful Steal skill, but that just didn't feel like enough, mainly because the strength of all of these is very situational. So Rogue now gets a skill that is less situationally useful.

I will describe each skill below and give some context behind why it exists or the thought behind it in spoiler boxes, but in general, a lot of these are meant to help give some options to 'alternate' play-styles for the classes.

1.28
New Skills - All promoted classes, as well as the Rogue base class, have received 1 new skill each.

• Evasion (Rogue) - Do the impossible and evade damage from skills and spells that automatically hit.
  Comments
  You could argue that the autohit's guaranteed damage was a natural counter to evade stacking, preventing it from becoming the strongest stat of the game, and you would be right to an extent. But at the same time it created an issue where dodge based characters were completely useless half of the time.
  
  Evasion doesn't negate the damage, as a heads-up; it reduces it by a percentage, after all other modifiers, up to a maximum of 50% reduction. And it's not guaranteed, either. It's very similar to as if you were attacking that person, so modifiers to hit, penalties to evade, and so on all come into play. And people invoking spells or flat on their back can't dodge anything, so the skill won't be useful if you're knocked down.
• Mighty Wall (Arbalest) - Become a mighty wall, gaining bonus DEF and RES and becoming immune to knockback to a brief time.
  Comments
  This skill is mostly to help the Arbalest synergize with other classes more and make it harder to keep them out of Blowback Cannon range permanently.
• Bright Bishop (Black Knight) - Send a diagonal bolt of light at your enemies, lighting them and spaces along the way up.
  Comments
  Similar to Crescent Rook, Bright Bishop is a projectile attack in a line. It also drops Light Shafts (sometimes) and causes the person hit to start Glowing for a few rounds. This should make skills like Obscure more attractive, since now Glowing can be inflicted by someone other than monsters, and it gives BKs a decent way to buff their (and allies') Hit.
• Two Souls Beyond (Bonder) - A perfectionist version of the classic Install, you and your Bonded Youkai can do it longer, or shorter, if danger presents itself.
  Comments
  Now you can have longer installs and avoid potentially fatal problems that occur... as long as it's with Bonded Youkai. This skill also lets you proc the effects of Fight As One if you only have one Bonded Youkai, so it's more for the Install fighter summoners out there.
• Grenade Launcher (Engineer) - Fire mini-bombs from one of your inventions, causing explosive havoc.
  Comments
  This is another bomb skill for the Engineer. They're slightly weaker than regular bombs, but they don't require you to have special items crafted and equipped to use. That said, I would like to also add more unique bomb crafting recipes in the future.
• Elemental Overtime (Evoker) - Send your mind into overtime, boosting the effects of Elemental Augment by Charge Mind's percentage while both are in effect.
  Comments
  In my eternal struggle to make people play Fist Mages, I decided to give Evokers a skill that not only buffs Elemental Augment, but gives Charge Mind and its duration extension skills a secondary function. This turns the damage on max rank EleAug to 25 each hit (which required another change, more on that later) and it doesn't consume Charge Mind in the process. So even if you're a regular mage type, you might want this skill to deal a bit more with your tome attacks while you wait for the perfect opportunity to cast a spell.
• Afflicted Spectre (Ghost) - Pile on the pain and increase your maximum HP for every negative status you're suffering from.
  Comments
  Can you guess why this skill would be useful? All it does is increase your maximum HP for every negative status you have. If you guessed 'it makes Rising Game easier to proc without reducing your HP', congratulations! Since your current HP never changes, you can retain higher levels of it while getting Rising Game bang for your buck. But only while you suffer from negative status effects. Note that this can be any status effect that appears in a red box, even ones caused by yourself or aren't that negative at all.
• Auto-Summon (Grand Summoner) - Call your first listed contract to your side as soon as trouble rears its ugly head.
  Comments
  An SL1 classic skill, the Auto-Summon has made its way to SL2. Now that you can rearrange your contracts in the Youkai Manager, there was no better time to add this skill, since the technical issues impeding it are no longer there.
• Sadistic Renewal (Hexer) - Get glee and focus from beating on people who are already in pain.
  Comments
  This skill lets you recover FP when you attack someone who is suffering from negative statuses. The FP recovery is a fixed amount based on Rank. This was the patch of giving mages skills that make them want to basic attack enemies, but Hexers are in a good spot already, so I didn't want to give them anything overbearing.
• Absolute Pace (Kensei) - Bait your opponent into attacking you, and then strike them back with the finishing move of a master of battle flow.
  Comments
  The last of the Absolute series, this skill lets you target an enemy. If that enemy attacks you and misses, you gain Battle Flow, which causes your next Kensei offensive skill to gain damage equal to 100% of your STR. Now maybe people will actually use them!
• Skyhigh (Lantern Bearer) - Spear your enemy into the air like a fish.
  Comments
  Lantern Bearers didn't have any Spear skills, so now they do. This one deals damage and puts your enemy into the Airborne status. I'll let you figure out uses for that.
• Lucky Shell (Magic Gunner) - Increase your own good fortune or steal your enemy's.
  Comments
  Magic Gunner already has a variety of offensive shells, so this one is more along the lines of utility or uniqueness. It lets you increase your Luck, on hit. It lets you steal your opponent's Luck if you charge it with a lot of juice. Have fun.
• Kadouha (Monk) - Releases a non-copyrighted energy ball in a line that gets stronger, flies further, and gains unique effects the more Ki it consumes.
  Comments
  No comment.
• Devocation (Priest) - The power of the gods will protect you, letting you reduce the chance for your Mercana invocations to break based on your Faith.
  Comments
  This probably seems useless, but a change later in the patch notes will make you think twice! Remember me.
• Arcane Formation (Tactician) - Tell your mages to line up, letting your spells do more damage and decreasing the chance of Invocations breaking for all in the formation.
  Comments
  The final formation boosts your spell power and protects your Invocations. Not much else to say here.
• Ice Skate (Verglas) - Skate along the ice as graceful as can be.
  Comments
  Lets you skate across ice sheets. If you skate long enough and run into an enemy, they get knocked down. This may seem like a utility skill, but it's actually a defensive one!
• Detogate (Void Assassin) - Explode a void gate to cause Dark damage to all those within a certain range and teleport them to a random square.
  Comments
  Void Assassin Mages will like this one, because it's a spell. Not much else to say about it. I mainly wanted to encourage more WIL based VAs for some reason.

Dormeho Teleporters - Similar to Chaturanga, these teleporters will take you from the entrance to near the Mage's Guild.
Golden Glow Animation - Golden Glow now has an animation effect while active.
Adjusted - Invocation break chance no longer takes into account the caster's WIL. (Often its inclusion meant that you would have no chance to break the Invocation, even if you dealt hundreds of points of damage).
Adjusted - Life Drain now costs 15 FP (up from 0).
Adjusted - Made the skill board's skill description text slightly taller to better accomidate long skill descriptions.
Adjusted - Typhur will now inflict Knocked Down on affected targets who are Airborne.
Adjusted - You now also set your alias in the tutorial area when you use the guestbook.
Adjusted - Inactive contracts in the Youkai manager are now denoted by a (*).
Adjusted - Elemental Augment damage dealt by gun weapons is now divided by the number of rounds it has.
* Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where quitting Yenten would not restore the player HUD.
- Fixed a bug where Banquet was not working properly.
- Fixed a bug involving fishing contests and updating placements.
- Fixed a bug where Parraeta still displayed its old recovery text.
- Fixed a bug where Needle's detonation effect was not recovering nearby allies' HP.
- Fixed a bug where Arena Combatants couldn't figure out how to use the Jackhammer properly.
- Fixed a bug where some special attacks weren't correctly displaying their effects on hit and critical rates in the combat forecast.
- Fixed a bug where all goblins that spawned in the fixed Goblin Cave dungeon would hang out in the bottom left.
- Fixed a bug where bandits were suffering from a shaved head fad.
- Fixed a bug where Kagekiri could end in tiles occupied by dense objects.
- Fixed a bug where the recent fishing contest weight scaling changes weren't working.
- Fixed a bug where Al Abel (Enchanting) wasn't giving its bonus to the crafting skill.

Click here to learn how to install and play the game!
Or click here to view the game's hub page and learn about it, see screenshots, who's playing, and more!