[Rendar]

So. Leveling is still sort of. Uh. Well. Very imbalanced. Like, sure. It's a lot quicker now but. Let's be real. The Melee vs Mage debate will go on forever, and mages will literally always win this debate on speed. Well. Not all mages. Hexers and Evokers, honestly.

Now I'm not saying "oy vey nerf their clear rate on dungeons". It's not anyone's fault that they can wipe out a battle with 13~ level 70 enemies in 2-3 turns where as it would take a melee forever/DIE because Swarm (or 0 FP because they have to expend 50x the amount the mages do).

Hell, I'm not even going "Hey; why not make dungeons give easier!" Because that still makes it a ton easier for mages.

I'm just asking maybe we should check out clear times between classes and figure out a way to make XP gained from BDPs be scaled to that? Maybe if a fight drags on with damage being dealt/given (not just running away around the last enemy) you could gain XP buffs to the final total. So if you spent say... 40 rounds fighting ONE group of enemies... You'd get more EXP. Sure, it might not be enough to make up for the fact that a mage probably just wiped out 10-15 encounters in the time it took you to do just that one but... Something would be better than nothing for fights that drag on longer in PVE.

What's this solve?

NON-NUKE CLASS EXP GRIND TIME

To a degree anyways. Evoker/Hexer's with the Leviathan Ammy will literally always be the better monster denizen murderer. Simply because they will never run out of FP/HP. Because one fight done will almost full heal them. BUT YOU KNOW. IT'S WORTH A SHOT.

[Zakizo]

Yes. Please. Right now I just force through the first grind as an Evoker, and switch to the real class after legend extension. I don't feel like that should be necessary. An Evoker can LE multiple times in a day, solo, if they grind for hours (and by that I mean throw their entire day away). I'd be impressed if someone managed to LE even once in a day as melee if they didn't have an Evoker or a Hexer helping them. There'd need to be some thought put into the round multiplier though. The only alternative I see is giving classes themselves their own EXP gain rates, with melee classes gaining more EXP than nuke classes, and parties averaging the EXP gain rate between all characters in them.

[Trexmaster]

One of the very first threads made on the new forums was a comparison of clear times, over a year ago now. Nothing's really changed.

Mages have only gotten better at clearing dungeons, but, at least now we got Demon Hunter and the Jackhammer as alternatives since then for easy mass-clearing.

The issue is that the game only heavily rewards being able to kill large amounts of enemies as quickly as possible. Melee oriented characters can't really do that effectively. Evokers, mages in general, Jackhammer users, and anyone with effective AoEs really will find clearing to be mangeable. The solution, I think, would be to provide tasks that rewarded dealing with single, more difficult, targets. Like, I don't know, quests, or something, or just making bosses like Gigas Rex not a joke and have them yield better rewards. I'll leave that topic for another day, though.

[Sawrock]

How about once per reboot, there can be a fight one can do that gives massive EXP, but is difficult? I could see it taking place at the Statue of Memories.

[Rendar]

The problem still remains that "Bigger, stronger" enemies will still more than likely give more physical/melee oriented characters quite a bit of trouble. Sure, they can eventually get through 3-5k, but for the most part? The person that will be still better about it.. is the mage that can just go "ey cm sear lmao". Because that's just a shitton of DoT they can cause that will do a lot (if not more) than a melee character can do in 1 turn.

I think Zakizo's idea was a bit better. Though maybe for solo only? So it doesn't lead to a mage teaming up with a ton of melee class people to enhance their own experience gain.

[Chaos]

The reason behind Melee lagging so far behind in clear times compared to Magic boils down to one thing: AoE attacks.

Managing FP in a dungeon is not much of an issue, if you have the methods down. Charge Mind and/or DPS in general is not an issue either, since it's entirely possible for both sides to lay down ridiculous damage on monsters. The issue is that where Melee can strike down one enemy, an Evoker/Hexer/LB can strike down at least three, and usually at the same FP costs. (No, the high base FP costs don't really deter the nuke mage's PvE rampage, especially with Arcane Tattoo and certain Talent(s) cut the costs down to size)

Ideally, the best option would be to include AoE options (see: around Area (3) options) for melee classes. The base classes would be an ideal place to start, since we're already hitting those up with plenty of new skills.

For the rest of you that are probably thinking, "But Chaos, why don't we just nerf AoE spells even further and call it a day," look in the spoiler below:

Two reasons why:
1. In a game where you are not only heavily encouraged to go through 60 levels multiple times, but also have to grind just to get an aesthetic addition (see: a new costume slot), we should not be looking to slow people down even further. Especially when the game's reliance on constant, often long-winded grinding for content has turned away plenty of good players to begin with.
2. These AoE spells are only superb against a swarm of PvE enemies, which is exactly what they're meant to do. For the most part (Wretched Oil potentially excluded), they do not work as well against a single enemy or in PvP. Trying to make them even harder to use, or hit for even less damage, would make most of them outright useless.

....Alternatively, throwing in that 'Champion' dungeon prefix suggestion that I proposed long ago (see: A dungeon prefix that's the opposite of crazy, limiting encounters to a single, powerful enemy that gives enough exp to equal roughly 5-6 monsters) would give Melee folks a place to go for equal grinding power.

[MegaBlues]

Lantern Bearer really shouldn't be a part of this. LB spells have a lot of range, but their power (before resistances) decays with distance, so actually using them for long-ranged AoEing won't do much.

but yeah, aoe attacks definitely need to have some sort of drawback, or more single-target skills need bonuses to make them more attractive

[Rendar]

Giving melee classes AoE attacks won't really solve the issue. Because they'll still have to spend the time to gather all the enemies together... Then do it repeatedly while also taking a good chunk of damage. Mages don't. They can just sit back, Charge Mind > Magai > Wretched Oil and murder the entire board or do well over... what. 13 enemies... They can do well over 2000 damage between all enemies in 12 momentum. Whether they resist it, or not. They'll be destroying the entire field. A melee person, in 12 momentum, could never do that without so much as even having to move.

Putting AoEs on a melee class (that are somewhat SP hungry, as is), that won't use them for anything BUT grinding isn't the way to go. Make fights more or less difficult depending on your classes, but give the same XP. Otherwise it won't be good.

Also; this isn't really a "NERF AOE" or "BUFF SINGLE TARGET ATTACKS"

That'd change the meta for PVP and make melee peeps even worse. Just. Adjust XP gains or some shit.

[Zakizo]

If the class EXP thing sounds good, I think I have a good way to go about it. When equipped with two different classes, you get the lower EXP modifier. So if you have Black Knight and Evoker equipped, you get the EXP modifier for Evoker. If in a party, everyone gets the lowest EXP modifier on the team (so if you're grinding with an Evoker, you now have the Evoker modifier since you have an Evoker helping you speed things up).

As an idea (based on my own experience in how well these dominate the grind, but probably would need tweaking because I most likely don't know what I'm talking about), the EXP scaling could be somewhere around:
Evoker: 1.0x
Hexer: 1.0x
Lantern Bearer: 1.2x
Magic Gunner: 1.5x
Verglas: 1.8x
Priest: 1.8x
Kensei: 2.0x
Ghost: 2.0x
Grand Summoner: 2.0x
Demon Hunter: 2.0x
Bonder: 2.2x
Engineer: 2.2x
Void Assassin: 2.5x
Tactician: 2.5x
Arbelist: 2.5x
Black Knight: 2.5x
Monk: 2.5x

Please note: I tried to rank them in terms of time efficiency, not necessarily their power.

Base classes could be left alone, or all be given a slight EXP boost.

Champion dungeons also sound great.

[Slydria]

I'm not too keen on an experience modifier based on Class because not everyone is built the same. For example, let's say I'm an Evoker that solely relies on Wind spells. Is it fair to get the same penalty as an Evoker that spams Magaisendo because it's the most efficient?


I think the idea of the Champion prefix is better than messing around with this idea of balancing experience gains based on 'class efficiency'.


Though here's another thing that I think contributes to how long fights take and that's the battlefield size.

I think battlefields may be too big, especially Spacey ones which I feel aren't fun due to how they prolong battles (unless you happen to be a Evoker/Hexer that can just attack everyone at once anyway), that said they do make the actual dungeon navigation much simpler which I suppose is the tradeoff but for most, it's definitely something to avoid.

This isn't my idea but perhaps the size of a battlefield should scale based on how many participants there are? 1v1 being a relatively small one while the big crazy fights would probably remain the size they currently are now. This wouldn't affect custom battlefields or specially created maps, just the random generated stuff but I think it may help.