Remove Max Pain from the game

Mae

You're the only person on the planet who I'd trust less with balancing this game than gravity

StellarFlare

Misao This ain't it chief
You can make mechanics that encourage party play that don't boil down to "Is it dark clawed?" Yes, okay. No, Party Wiped harder than anything.
It comes with no warning, it fucks every class that das DoT, it fucks your entire party. It's not an engaging mechanic, it's just a "dark claw this and let me kill it". That's not party play, that's just having a dark claw slave.
It doesn't make the game harder. It just kills your entire party and forces you to regroup, rebuff, and go again (unless Max Pain is off cd again).

Examples of party play: Villa of deceit where the party has to interact with the 4 lights while the Twisted Goddess is immune to damage (The fact she also has Max Pain fucking sucks).
Aquila where you need to drag the mvp toward the circles while the rest of your team needs to survive
Betelgeuze where you need to tank the mvp and hold it's attention while the team goes kill the boss ads so it can take damage again. Requires Devo/Land protector to not get oneshot be spells. Deaths make the boss immune so the support needs to be extra careful too.

These are team mechanics. Notice how they are very clearly signaled and don't wipe your entire party outright.

[deleted]

StellarFlare hmm yeah it really boils down to how max pain doesnt have any indicator before being deployed which is understandable that people will be frustrated by that which is why instead of removing it outright having some kind of warning (through dialogue or long cast time) is the way to go with it.

HTF is probably my favourite max pain implementation. You'll know when kimi gonna deploy it (for those that dont know, she have long cast time before the skill deployed) and so the dps prepared to stop the skill for few seconds while the tank tanking it. As long as it is not instant and have indicator the skill is fine.

Misao

Why are you suddenly talking as if Dark Claw was the only way to avoid a wipe

RG's ultimate sacrifice can prevent your death once, which is enough to realize Max Pain is enabled and stop hitting.
Cardis can stay away from danger and Redemptio to bring everyone back to life, which was a very common strategy to deal with Margareta's Max Pain back in bio5.
GX and Ninja having an easy way to deal with it encourages ppl to want them in parties where Max Pain is present. This is no different than parties wanting an EM for land protector. Nothing wrong with that. If you call that a slave then everyone is a slave. RO isn't meant to be a solo game where everyone else who brings buffs and heal and support is just a convenient commodity.
And you can always be mindful of the Max Pain threshold/conditions to cast, and stop hitting when MP is coming.

I understand it's not a "wow super cool mechanic peak gameplay" but there's nothing wrong with it. Just another gimmick monster skill you have to circumvent. And you have ways to do it unlike hard hitting ground spells where there's usually no real alternative to LP.

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