Long Live Tamu 5

Hello Dev Team! It's been a while. You guys have been putting in a lot of work and most of it has been for the better! Tamer feels much more fulfilling to play and succeed on compared to a year ago and I'm sure it's feeling better than ever before. 

An update on my personal tamer. I'm now 671 gs 281/285/388 kutum. If I go more defensive I'd be 676gs 273/277/401 which is generally a better feel for pvp-ing. I was pushing for 316ap previously but after failing to get my pen neck for 15 attempts I've decided to change my approach and focus on building up my defensive capability due to the current high damage range meta on console at the moment. After changing to a more defensive build i was able to grind comfortably on my awakening tamer and in general pvp i tend to be able to run with the ball and participate so long as my evasion is high enough for the specific people we are fighting, this for me is nice compared to the sideline ganking playstyle. The comparison for me is pretty much down to killing one target and potentially getting ganked and killed while finishing or reducing my finishing capacity to increase survivability and cc more than one high value target in a group fight. These seem to me like the only two reasonable options in group fighting.

GRINDING:

Since beginning to grind on my tamer I've ended up spending most of my time in elvia at orcs and bloody monastery both pretty good for awakening and succession tamer. If I'm 100% honest tamer in elvia feels amazing when you have a weapon. Without a weapon it takes 2-3 skills extra to finish a pack if they are grouped properly before dps rotation. Tamer PVE seems to always come back to the fact that it's not particularly satisfying to strike several times and it does not feel effective(i'm an assassin my enemy should die quick). If I wanted the most effective strikes my grouping is likely poor due to excessive repositioning. If I want the best grouping for dps rotation I end up wasting time waiting for walking mobs to get in range. If I attack the biggest groups I tend to need to dps down 3-5 groups of running mobs that arrive at different intervals. This applies mostly to awakening as prime roaring is a 7 sec cd so each arriving group can get roared and this takes care of most of the stragglers because the skill is very powerful and 360 a.o.e. 

I know it's mostly a petty complaint and I will acknowledge that you guys have made many changes that have improved tamers silver per hour. We got valencia changes to make that reasonably valuable, many rounds of skill changes to make many of them worth using again, iframe update and shortcut input. Now all that's left is to make tamer PVE truly satisfying so i can stop tagging flavor of the month meta pve’ers to make grinding more enjoyable. I really would prefer to just use my tamer awakening. Without being forced to roll another class like maegu, woosa, drakania, guardian or use succession tamer  which i don't really like much.

In my opinion… ex: if 3-5/7 non elite mobs run up to me and I get back attacks they should die in 1 strong hit (beast rampage/ soaring strike/ celestial slam) or 2 medium strong hits (anything else) without an elvia weapon. With an elvia weapon my medium hits should be life threatening to most mobs and any strong skill should eliminate anything(non elite in most zones) in front of me. The easiest way for me to explain this in simple terms is that I would be overly satisfied if my non elvia weapon pve felt 50% worse than my elvia weapon pve. I would prefer a elvia weapon NOT feel 2-3x better for 10 mins then back to average/ below average feeling pve.

Awakening vs Succession

Awakening: high apm and many single target-ish, small to medium a.o.e. Skills. great movement and protection compared to succession

Succession: slightly lower but still high apm, simplified combat rotation and medium to large a.o.e. Skills. less skills overall though so greatly reduced complexity. No S-block.

It's a bit selfish but I feel like the awakening pve damage% should be increased 20-50% so I can grind super effectively, tamer has basically been hamstrung since launch and there's no way to make up for the loss of pve silver maining tamer would cause compared to meta pve chars . So for the next 6mo just let us feel amazing and top the pve loot charts lol…. What would actually happen is I could grind reasonably hard and make avg numbers without sweating super hard. Maybe this is just a me thing but recently i've been tamer/maegu and maegu feels super good to run around in circles. Maybe it's just new to me but i've got witch, lahn , shai, guardian, maegu tagged for pveing and swap off when I get bored with them. All strictly because i like the feel of them better than tamer in pve. Combat on tamer is leagues ahead for me though.

Tamer pre awakening just needs a sblock and/or backwards iframe jump. With all the ranged damage in the game it's unfortunate for her to be unable to defend herself in that specific situation(fg skills are hard to time, especially the short ones and ones you want to cancel after). Tamer can't turn invisible and does not have SAFG, she can run but not very far or spectacularly fast. The bruisers can out defend us, the speedsters can out speed or distance us, and geared people straight up kill us through super armor. Give us the block to improve survivability 

I feel like awakened tamer would be best at big ass monsters, high sustained dps, lots of movement and defensive options. Succession is definitely better at field clearing.

TAMER PVP:

Pvp with the new iframes feels great, with a reasonable amount of dp and eva. I can actively iframe through ball engagements and away from losing fights so long as i'm not chased by a hash, maewah, musa, nova, ninja, kuno(someone fast with a quick catch ability). I can easily dodge archer and ranger shots to engage them and apply pressure. Woosa and maegu are a difficult matchup because i got short arms and they move too much or have clones that confuse me at times this really reduces my potential dps. most other fights have a reasonable chance to win.

IMO: The worst fights are with enemies who are extra elusive and tend to evade my attacks more easily than I can engage them. Long duration cc skills that are area of effects(multiple cc ticks), SA-FG(cant pressure them and kill in same rotation without severely out gearing), eva memes (need to reduce my ap and improve accuracy to the point it's hard to finish them before they get up)

TAMER PVP SUGGESTIONS:

1: make accuracy buff more accessible ( move from full moon to beast rampage or soaring strike) full moon seems like a good choice but in an actual non 1v1 fight it's basically dumb to use because you give the approaching enemy teammates who are looking to peel an opening and must complete animation for the accuracy buff. Moving accuracy buff to a protected skill that we will use 75% of the time will improve our overall kill potential, i would also reduce it to 7-10% and add the removed % 's to the passive skill. To retain our ability to pressure eva memes.

2: make passive accuracy gain 10% or 15% instead of 5% reduce full moon accuracy buff or make 15% accuracy buff more accessible, in a 1v1 the current setup is fine but reliably finishing a full moon in a 1vx situation is tough and likely to get you killed by the peeling opponent.

3:add the ability to full moon after legendary beast dance: echo. This makes for a smoother cc chain and easier pve

To me the best combination for engaging is LBD:up>full moon> soaring strike> LBD:echo up>celestial slam> beast rampage. This is the fastest animation chain, with ccs that make sense in order. I would prefer we had other accuracy buff options because removing full moon from the combination would increase dps and shorten the combo duration. if full moon was accessible from more skills and applied buff faster that might also be good, especially for pve.

Giving a free easy to punish opening from me needing to complete the animation for buff is bad for 1vX. there

4: 10-15% damage on beast rampage, soaring strike and celestial slam. If i hit someone with any of these and dont mortally wound them it's an issue(if back or air attack it should kill equal gear in 1.5 skills or less). Maybe increase tamers special atk% or add 10-15% accuracy buff to these skills instead of full moon. That way it's not just a straight up damage increase to everyone. This is mostly in regards to tankier classes and dp/eva builds who have SAFG. So maybe even a shield reduction/ shield break mechanic.

5:all around spinner should be SAFG spinning stick =block if stick is spinning all around then it should be all around block.

6:LBD core should extend to LBD echo giving it a frontal guard in all directions, this would double the amount of protected engages tamer has in large scale making it more manageable. I'm pretty sure this would help with getting peeled off an almost dead target too. Since the skill has her stick sweeping in front of her it seems logical to believe it should block/ parry while attacking

7:make celestial slam cancelable,the faster i can get out of it the more likely i am to use it.

8:make dog more threatening in pvp howling isn't effective and modes are not especially useful..it would be really nice to be able to send the dog for a stun again.being able to stop someone in their tracks with a dog stun while within pole vault range would be amazing.

9: reduce dog riding tankiness by 60%making it possible to kill with 3-5 people, then improve dog riding dps 100-200% should be able to trample/upclaw> lightning of earth> roaring/ throat burn for kill… make dog like hystria mobs can't be cc in general but can be stunned. Make it possible to 2 skill people from dog back while also making it possible to stun dog and kill dog while riding. Its hard enough to drive the dog properly, it should at least be rewarded with relatively easy kill potential.

10:it should be possible to pick a LBD stance and Dog mode preference: in rbf you die alot and every time i die i need to summon dog> pick attack mode> pick lbd direction>get rbf eva buff> accuracy buff on unprotected skill then i can go fight.  I should just be able to summon my dog and that it always stays in the mode I select until I change it even through death. As for the lbd stance it can be annoying to not get the outcome I desired because I forgot to load up a dance to echo. Rbf just highlights the problem because you want to engage frequently and die often.

11: improve hp on hit of beast rampage and intimidation and turtle mode spinner. 100-200 hp on hit  to improve our ability to stick to a target and finish them.

12: make dp buff from blocking trigger faster or immediately 

13:cloud stomping eva and accuracy buff should be moved. I can't really find a good reason to actively use this skill and it's mostly wasting one of my ring menu slots. Damage is 300%+ lower than my useful skills, super armor in this meta gets you killed, accuracy buff is 3 sec vs 10 sec from full moon and 6% eva is its only redeemable effect and why I have it hot keyed.

14: soaring strike should be 50% faster. It's the best burst damage skill forsure, initially i thought width and range of skill was small but it seems like the load up is just slow and would be much better if significantly faster.

15: difficult to tell when the grab will work… maybe it's because I have the shortest height possible. But it seems like my grab misses in situations where I'm facing an opponent and they are relatively close, hard to explain but in the heat of the moment I seem to miss my grab quite a bit. Maybe it's because I'm bad. Idk but i've also grabbed people in situations where it seemed like it shouldn't be possible and they levitate into my foot then fall. It could be clearer. Not sure how to address. Im pretty sure i'm not being evaded either because the skill has +50% accuracy rate.

If accuracy was more accessible that would improve our dps, extra special attack damage would help with finishing, more hp on hit would improve survivability, SAFG on spinner would help with getting punished while finishing(prob not but worth a try), s-block or backwards iframe in pre awakening would help not get blown up while evading especially if you trigger the backwards jump chain.

She just needs a slight damage increase because the ranged opponents can peel her faster than she can kill and the % of range players is high right now. Defense has already been improved to a point where i don't feel it needs anything other than a s-block/ back iframe in pre awakening and maybe some significant hp on hit buffs for the few skills that have it

Tamer should have a hit and run playstyle, when you hit them they should die relatively fast. Because you legit have to run immediately sometimes even before you can finish them especially in the current ranged damage meta. Tamer got short arms if you slip up and let her catch you it should be mostly sorted.

Maybe it's all the range damage forcing everyone to build more tanky but I don't feel I'm finishing as fast as I should be below 297 bracket. 297+ ap feels great offensively but the problem is that I lose so many defensive stats I die to trial characters and random ranged attacks. If i go full evasion meme then im hitting people with nerf bats and iframing through enemy balls like an idiot without a care in the world. 

All in all good work these are just some areas you should look into to improve the feeling and satisfaction of investing time, effort and usd into the tamer character… keep up the good work ill be sure to make another essay after some significant changes. I owe all you guys and gals a handy after the changes so far. Fix everything on this list and ill bj every employee and empty my wallet again.

Greetings LogoutGG

I wanted to thank you for your extensive feedback regarding both Tamer's Awakening & Succession class balance. We always strive to make improvements to all classes based on player feedback & data we acquire.

We will take your feedback into consideration & if any changes were to happen to the class in the future, they will be relayed to all adventurers on our official webpage. I encourage you to continue to provide us with feedback as we always appreciate the dedication from our playerbase who takes the time to write out feedback like the one you wrote out.

[GM]Ash

Ruler of Ash Forest