Making Blade Masters Viable
Updated: Mar 8, 2022
With the main quests and side quests pretty much done, I've been focusing on Itemization and polishing the classes. I'm pretty much happy with where the magic casters are in terms of damage and utility but was kind of "meh" about the Blade Masters during my combat tests. The design intent for the Blade Master is a single-target melee "boss-killer" (with skills like "One With The Sword" that do a percentage of enemy's maximum HP in damage) and the go-to class for taking out that one annoying enemy quickly. During my tests, they did "ok" damage but weren't fulfilling their intended purpose, so I tried two things: 1) Added an inherent percentage bonus to Attack for the Blade Master class so they derive a greater benefit from any gear 2) Introduced the Greatsword (2-handed swords) that only Blade Masters can wield. In addition to looking cool in the weapon animations, the Greatsword added the opportunity to create a weapon with the necessary Attack and Critical Rate crucial to the Blade Master's role without unbalancing other sword-wielding classes like the Sword Saint. The result was big, satisfying damage numbers and a class that feels viable.
On the next blog entry I'll share changes coming to our area-of-effect "crowd basher", the Beserker class, with the addition of dual wielding...