11-16-2005, 05:47 AM
More specifically, disable MVP leveling.
If you've seen MVPs during town invasion events, then you know that they can level up VERY QUICKLY because of the numerous kills they can get. They can even level over 99 if they kill enough people. Once they hit that point, it's either
1. Impossible to hit them with physical attacks. My hunter can reach 150 dex with buffs and yet wasn't able to land any attacks on a lvl 99+ Drake (except with blitz beat).
2. Damn near impossible to do any significant damage. When Lord of Death was spawned, everyone was doing decent damage on him, but by the time he hit lvl 99+, all non-skill physical attacks did 1 damage. Worse, LoD's int went up so high that I was watching wizards receive thousands of damage from his soul strike.
3. Time to bend over. No hope of killing this MVP, ever. Moves too fast, impossible to hit, MDEF is insane, DEF is ridiculously high, and HP is twice what it normally is.
This also favors certain builds over others. Magic casters have a clear advantage because they don't have to worry about their skills missing. DEF-piercing attack users also have an unfair lead over other characters.
Obvious response would be "well get together a good party and don't die when you're fighting MVPs." Yea... if only it were that simple. With the recent patches buffing MVPs far beyond their former strength, it's already a daunting task just to take an MVP down. There are of course certain cheese tactics you can use (icewall a fence, snipe it, etc.) but generally speaking it's unlikely that even a strong group will kill a decent MVP without losing some lives (once again there are exceptions with certain gear/builds).
But the bottom line is that monster leveling adds a whole new dimension to MVPing that was never accounted for by Gravity's testers, and as much as I respect whoever programmed the script, I doubt they had time to thoroughly test all the possibilities.
At the very least, don't let them reach over level 99. That's just ridiculous.
If you've seen MVPs during town invasion events, then you know that they can level up VERY QUICKLY because of the numerous kills they can get. They can even level over 99 if they kill enough people. Once they hit that point, it's either
1. Impossible to hit them with physical attacks. My hunter can reach 150 dex with buffs and yet wasn't able to land any attacks on a lvl 99+ Drake (except with blitz beat).
2. Damn near impossible to do any significant damage. When Lord of Death was spawned, everyone was doing decent damage on him, but by the time he hit lvl 99+, all non-skill physical attacks did 1 damage. Worse, LoD's int went up so high that I was watching wizards receive thousands of damage from his soul strike.
3. Time to bend over. No hope of killing this MVP, ever. Moves too fast, impossible to hit, MDEF is insane, DEF is ridiculously high, and HP is twice what it normally is.
This also favors certain builds over others. Magic casters have a clear advantage because they don't have to worry about their skills missing. DEF-piercing attack users also have an unfair lead over other characters.
Obvious response would be "well get together a good party and don't die when you're fighting MVPs." Yea... if only it were that simple. With the recent patches buffing MVPs far beyond their former strength, it's already a daunting task just to take an MVP down. There are of course certain cheese tactics you can use (icewall a fence, snipe it, etc.) but generally speaking it's unlikely that even a strong group will kill a decent MVP without losing some lives (once again there are exceptions with certain gear/builds).
But the bottom line is that monster leveling adds a whole new dimension to MVPing that was never accounted for by Gravity's testers, and as much as I respect whoever programmed the script, I doubt they had time to thoroughly test all the possibilities.
At the very least, don't let them reach over level 99. That's just ridiculous.