I know that not everyone played SinX/GX branch in WoE scene and people might not understand the essential fundamental role of SinX. I kept hearing the same thing over and over again from the veterans who played long years of WoE, be it in pre renewal or renewal up to 3rd Job.
SinX was always a Ground Control and never DPS
The main task of Ground Control (GC) is to "clear" certain areas in the battlefield.
Typical scenario where people really need GC players, is when there are ecallers (Champ or Stalker) get through the red zone (Ledge) and go near the emp (yellow zone) and attempting to ecall there. This is something that even my current guild still struggles. When just one person pass, it's the task of the GC to kill that person so the others can focus on GvGing (Guild vs Guild) on ledge. What typically happen on inexperienced guilds, everyone started to move away from the red zone (Ledge) and chase the person. This severely weakens the defense on the ledge, and can cause the defending team to lose the castle.
It doesn't really matter if it's the ecaller or not, the task of the GC is to make sure the "ground" he is "controlling" has to be free from enemy team. To be able to do this, the GC requires as follow:
- Have really strong burst to kill the enemy even on full reduction. e.g. Asura Strike (Champ) still dealt 55k damage on my general full reduction build.
- Typically single target skill
- Ability to kill while being solo
- Low range / melee based skill e.g. Sonic Blow (SinX)
- Some kind of movement based skill to catch other player e.g. Flying Side Kick (Taekwon), Body Relocation (Champ)
So to make it really simple, if a GC catches you, you should be dead most of the time. But if getting catched by GC would mean instant death, it would be boring. So the new sentence gonna be:
If a GC catches you, you should be dead most of the time. But having a build that specifically made to counter that GC should make you stay alive for a longer time or even unkillable.
This ensures that there's a counter play for the build. For example, having Long Range Reduction 100% (we sadly don't have this in our server), would completely render Soul Destroyer useless, and then the SinX would have to Sonic Blow the target. Because Sonic Blow is a melee, there's even higher chance that the SinX gonna die / traded (both people ded) by doing it.
This shows the true strength of SinX, being able to swap between Soul Destroyer (ranged) and Sonic Blow (melee).
The problem with our current Soul Destroyer (Soul Breaker - SBK):
Currently we have muhRO custom SBK behavior that has a range of 9 cells (green) instead of 4 cells (red). So technically what is happening. SinX has GROUND CONTROL damage on Single Target DPS range. The damage that was meant to be Ground Controlling, is now spread to 9 cells range. A range that normally being filled by single target DPS role. This probably why kRO nerfed the 9 cells range to 4 cells range (Single Target DPS range down to Ground Control range).
So here comes the million dollar question. How should we nerf SBK?
Nerf its range down to 4 cells.
This probably is the easiest way to do this. Just kill SBK SinX, force them to play as Ground Control.
Nerf its damage down to single target DPS damage.
This will be trickier to do, cause people would have to find where SBK damage should be. For example if we should bring it down to the level of a 2B full DPS build of Acid Demonstration / Finger Offensive, assuming the sinx spent 2b as well. This will ensure that SBK will only fill the single target DPS role instead of the current Ground Control role, but having single target DPS range. But by doing this, SBK will not be able to fill GC role.
Nerf its damage down to single target DPS damage, if the range > 4cells.
This will be a torture for Muh, I'm sorry Muh for suggesting this🤣 This will be the hybrid of those two above.
The moment that someone uses SBK further from the red cells (Ground Control - kRO SBK version), the damage will fall off tremendously, that it will not kill people on general full reduction. But if a champion or stalker get inside the red zone (Ground Control) SBK will deal full damage, and the only way to survive it is by having Long Range Reduction / Guessing the weapon element, and this still can be countered by Sonic Blow.
Doing this nerf will allow SBK SinX to be Single Target DPS (with scuffed damage) and Ground Control (with full damage). Something that both nerfs presented before don't allow.
Nerf it to not do critical damage, this is the busted part of kRO design.
Dealing critical damage on top of Enchant Deadly Poison means this single skill probably has the most modifiers compared to any other skill. e.g. Finger Offensive, Acid Demonstration. By nerfing it to never crit, it will basically make Katar build useless, cause people are using katar for the double crit bonus. This will opens up to Dual Wielding SBK build, that is countered by Stalker's Reject Sword. It feels like a crap to die on your own SBK to Stalker's Reject Sword, but this extra difficulty is actually a really nice addition. This also allows people to use FLEE build to dodge SBK. But this nerf will completely break the current crit based SBK build and might be too hard for newbies SinX to theorycraft themself a build that has enough ASPD by dual wielding, but deals enough damage, while having high enough HIT rate to not miss. Not to say having a katar swap gameplay to Sonic Blow.
Something from my personal experience on my last server, SBK couldn't crit. SBK was also nerfed damagewise, cause of someone who had Thanatos Card and Infinite Eddga. So SBK was already on a state where it was unusable unless you have similar mvp cards.
But when the kRO change of 4 cells SBK came, they did not adjust the damage properly. So esentially what happened was, it was a GC ranged skill, that deals no damage. Getting overshadowed by GX Cross Impact 7 cells range and spammy 0.35sec CD was also another problem, cause CI filled the GC role damagewise, and have higher range.
That all happened cause people don't understand the fundamentals of Ground Control x Single Target DPS interaction. Something that I also didn't understand till recently.
So how would you nerf Soul Destroyer?
