Hey all, it's the highly anticipated somewhat anticipated guide that no one wanted about the damage calculations behind the Support classes of Maplesaga. To reiterate, I'll make no balance suggestions here and I'll assume current end game raiding conditions (Everyone is 200 and has SE). In order to compare classes, I use the measure of a "Damage Coefficient" this number isn't perfect because it ignores the secondary stats of most DPS classes. However I choose to use it because in general, the secondary stat of a DPS class contributes to less than 5% of that classes DPS. Bowmasters (BMs) Bowmasters are the primary support class of Maplesaga. This is because of how powerful the Sharp Eye(SE) buff works with NLs (the primary single target DPS class of Maplesaga). In addition to being very useful, the math behind a BM's DPS is relatively simple. A BM's range and damage is calculated as follow: Upperbound = [(DEX * 3.4 + STR) / 100] * Weapon Attack Lowerbound = (DEX * 0.9 * 3.4 * 0.9 + STR) / 100 * Weapon Attack Therefore: Average hit = (DEX * 3.077 + STR) / 100 * Weapon Attack * 1.0 (for Hurricane) In addition to the very basic DPS formula BM's have base crit rate of 40% and a basic crit boost of 200%. With Sharp Eyes, this makes a crit rate of 55% and a crit damage of 340% (instead of 100%). This puts a BM's Damage coefficient at 7.14. BM's use Hurricane as the primary DPS skill and this fires an arrow every 120ms. Overall Bowmasters and Marksmen are very similar and I will go over the minor mechanics of the archer class in general after the Marksmen section. However, two features of BMs are the use of the Concentrate skill (which boosts weapon attack) and the constant-cast nature of the hurricane skill. This means that while a BM might have strong DPS numbers on paper, in actual raid conditions they are unable to translate this DPS in raids because of how often hurricane is interrupted. Marksmen (MMs) Marksmen fall in to the exact same bucket as Bowmasters in raid scenarios. They provide SE to the party and try their best to do DPS. The mathematics behind marksmen is a bit more difficult than a BM's because of the Snipe skill. This is a 5 second cool-down skill that does roughly max damage (200,000). Because of this skill, I'll have to combine all the attacks of a Marksman into one attack cycle and proceed with the damage calculations that way. A MM's range and damage is calculated as follow: Upperbound = [(DEX * 3.6+ STR) / 100] * Weapon Attack Lowerbound = (DEX * 0.9 * 3.6 * 0.9 + STR) / 100 * Weapon Attack Therefore: Average hit = (DEX * 3.16 + STR) / 100 * Weapon Attack * 1.0 (for Strafe) Much like BMs, MM's have base crit rate of 40% and a basic crit boost of 200%. With Sharp Eyes, this makes a crit rate of 55% and a crit damage of 340% (instead of 100%). This puts a MM's Damage coefficient at 7.33. Unfortunately, MMs do not have Hurricane and rely on Strafe to do their DPS. This has a fire rate of 4 attacks every 720ms (630ms with SI). This means that without SI, a MM will do 7 strafes between each snipe and 8 strafes with SI. Additionally, In order to estimate the damage coefficient of Snipe I'll use a 15k average hit (buffed Marksman). Using this assumption each Snipe does approximately 42.13 damage coefficients. I arrived at this number by dividing 200,000 by 15,000 and the multiplying by a non-crit shot multiplier of 3.16. Therefore, for the purposes of this guide, a MM will do 276.58 damage coefficients every 5760ms without SI and 305.89 damage coefficients every 5670ms with SI. Archers in general suffer from the problem of having no mobility/utility skills as well as generally fragile class. The fragility combined with the power of the SE buff means that archer's primary job is to stay alive in raids and provide the party w/ SE. Its also notable that archers are the only class with a weapon mastery of 90% (as opposed to 60%). This means that the distance between their highest hit and lowest hit is much smaller than most classes. Buccaneers (Buccs)Credit to @juulia and @chensqi for helping me with this section Buccaneers are rare support class that provide Speed Infusion (SI) and Time Leap (TL) to their party. They act as a pseudo-warrior with Snatch (similar to Monster Magnet) and Corkscrew Blow (similar to Rush). Notably, Buccs can only use the Snatch ability while transformed which is 2/3 of the time. Buccs use a multitude of skills in raids and therefore will need several formulae that will be weighted based on their use time to calculate their damage coefficients. A bucc's range and damage is calculated using the following formula: Upperbound = [(STR * 4.8 + DEX) / 100] * Weapon Attack Lowerbound = (STR * 0.9 * 4.8 * .6 + DEX) / 100 * Weapon Attack Therefore: Average Hit = [(STR * 3.70 + DEX) / 100] * Weapon Attack * X% (for each skill) A bucc uses the following skills with the following damage ratios: Demolition - 400% 8 attacks every 2340ms (only during transform) Dragon Strike - 810% 1 attack every 1080ms Barrage - 230% 6 attacks every 1830ms Buccs usually macro Barrage and Dragon Strike together because Barrage has a hidden cool-down from which another barrage cannot be used. Using these numbers it is possible to estimate the damage coefficient of a bucc using 3 minute damage coefficient cycles (180,000ms). This means that the Bucc damage coefficient during transform is as follows: 3.70 (base) * 4 (for Demolition) * 8 (attacks for Demolition) * 120 (duration of Transform) / (2.340 time for each Demolition) = 6071.79 Then once you modify the equation for to use the benefit of SE, you get a damage coefficient of 6390.56 Then the damage coefficient for buccs outside of transform is: (3.70 (base) * 2.3 (for Barrage) * 6 (attacks for Barrage) + 3.70 (base) * 810 (for Dragon Strike)) * 60 (duration of Transform downtime) / (1.08+1.83 (the cast times of Dragon Strike + Barrage)) = 1670.72 Then once you modify the equation for to use the benefit of SE, you get a damage coefficient of 1782.86 This means that over the course of 3 minutes a Bucc will do 8173.43 damage coefficients. Its important to note that these formulae focus on single target DPS, but Dragon Strike can hit up to 6 targets. While both Barrage and Demolition only hit 1. Outside of their DPS numbers Buccs during the cast time of demolition, buccs cannot be hit as their character physically disappears. Additionally, the skill Time Leap (TL) is usefully for resetting the cool-downs of all cool-down based skills including: Echo of the Hero (All classes) Hero's Will (All classes) Smokescreen (Shadower) Enrage (Hero) Concentrate (Bowmaster) Battleship (Corsair) Transform (Buccaneer) Shadower (Shad) Credit to @SmellyBriefs, @guy776 , and @Tiited for help w/ some of the info and testing here Shadowers (Shads) fall into a strange category. They're only support skill is Smokescreen, which allows party members standing within it to avoid all damage for 1 minute. This skill as a cool-down of 5 minutes, meaning it has a 1 minute up time w/ 4 minutes of downtime. Smokescreen also prevents all seduces from happening in the raid while it it active. Outside of the 1 minute Shads act as a support class, they act as DPS. And their DPS numbers are weird. Much like a Buccaneer, the main single target damage skill of a Shad is a marcro. For Shads, this macro is Darksight-Assassinate-Boomerang Step. Darksight itself does no damage, so the damage coefficient will be solely based off of the damage from Assassinate and Boomerang Step. The damage from Boomerang Step is calculated as follows: Upperbound = [(LUK * 3.6 + STR + DEX) / 100]* Weapon Attack * 7 (for Boomerang Step) Lowerbound = (LUK * 0.9 * 3.6 * .6 + STR + DEX) / 100 * Weapon Attack * 7 (for Boomerang Step) Therefore: Average Hit = (LUK * 2.77 + STR + DEX) / 100 * Weapon Attack * 7 (for Boomerang Step) It's important to note here that Boomerang step has been changed recently from 500% to 700% damage, and this is not reflected in the library. Get on it @alex . The damage from assassinate is much harder to approximate. In order to do this, I did testing with @guy776 and @Tiited . The damage of a single attack from Assassinate to be 612% damage. Using that number, it is approximated that the damage from Assassinate is calculated as follows: Upperbound = [(LUK * 3.6 + STR + DEX) / 100]* Weapon Attack * 6.12 (for Assassinate) Lowerbound = (LUK * 0.9 * 3.6 * .6 + STR + DEX) / 100 * Weapon Attack * 6.12 (for Assassinate) Therefore: Average Hit = (LUK * 2.77 + STR + DEX) / 100 * Weapon Attack * 6.12 (for Assassinate) Notably in the Shad macro, only the first 3 attacks of Assassinate are used and these attacks cannot crit. Combining both of these equations 1:1 as well as modifying only the Boomerang step equation for SE, you find that a Shad does approximately 90.81 damage coefficients every 2310ms (unaffected by SI). Shadower's also have the skill Meso Explosion. However this damage is difficult to quantify in the scope of this guide as it varies heavily w/ the number of Shads in the raid as well as the Boss you are hitting. However, it is a significant portion of a Shadower's damage in a raid and Shadowers should be exploding the Mesos roughly every 3 minutes (the time it takes for the oldest Meso bag to despawn). Shadowers also benefit from having many other utility skills. Just like their DPS class counterpart, they have Shadow Shifter to avoid 1/3 of all incoming attacks. Additionally, they have movement options with the Assaulter skill, as well as I-frames during the cast duration of the Boomerang Step skill. Dark Knight (DK) Thanks to @Pepperspray and @lilyroll for pointing out the beholder change The presence of Dark Knights in the "Support" Category may be controversial. However, I decided to do the grouping of these guides by the presence of a useful party buff, which a DK has. DK's party buff is Hyper Body, a skill that increases maximum HP and MP. Hyper Body is fairly useful in end game raids because it allows seduce targets to more successfully tank the duration of a seduce without logging off. Dark Knights have two options for primary weapon: Spear and Pole Arm. Because of how "Stabbing vs Swinging" damage calculation comes out, Spear users will do 5/3 the damage of a Pole Arm user with the Dragon Crusher skill (DK's primary DPS skill). Additionally, the attack speed of Spears is two levels higher than that of Pole Arms. This makes Spear Dark Knights far and away the better choice. The damage calculations for DKs is a bit irregular as DK's have the Berserk skill. This doubles their damage below 50% of their HP, and is one two skills on Maplesaga that modify damage manipulatively. Outside of that their damage is easy to calculate. The formula for DK Dragon Crusher damage is as follows: Upperbound = [(STR * 5.0 + DEX) / 100] * Weapon Attack * 1.7 (for Dragon Crusher) Lowerbound = [(STR * 5.0 * .9 * .8 + DEX) / 100] * Weapon Attack * 1.7 (for Dragon Crusher) Therefore: Average Hit = [(STR * 4.3 + DEX) / 100] * Weapon Attack * 1.7 (for Dragon Crusher) After accounting for the 2-times damage from Berserk and Buff from SE, DKs do an average of 16.43 damage coefficients 3 times every 930ms (810ms w/ SI) and can hit up to 3 targets. In addition, DKs also have the general warrior skills of Rush, Monster Magnet, and Power stance. This gives DK's great utility and DPS in most raids at the cost of needing to maintain their HP below 50%. Part 1 + Part 2 Wrap Up Using the calculated coefficients, it is possible to create a generalized chart for DPS (w/ SI): In this chart, I've sorted the classes by damage output. Interestingly Bowmaster damage is surprisingly high for being the primary support class, while Marksmen lag behind even when SI is available. This difference is slightly narrowed in most raids because Hurricane (the Bowmaster Skill) is often interrupted when hit, while a Marksman isn't interrupted as much when hit. Shadowers and Buccanners heavily lag behind as a single target DPS class, but part of both jobs main damage dealing skills can hit multiple targets (Boomerang Step for Shadowers and Dragon Strike for Buccaneers). This means that both can easily up their DPS output by positioning correctly. These are also the only two classes that have iframes in their damage dealing moves, allowing them to avoid being hit during raids. ***As stated earlier, I was not able to find a reasonable way to calculate the damage output of Meso Explosion for Shadowers. If anyone has any ideas, please tell me. Recently there has been a substantial Nerf to Paladins, and my original math wasn't exactly correct. I will go back to my previous guide and rework the math. I'll remove this paragraph and update the cart when the Paladin damage is correctly modeled. And for the damage coefficients w/o SI: There is no Buccaneer in this chart as it really doesn't make sense to include that job here (Buccs will always have SI). Not much changes for the Support classes here as only Marksman and Dark Knight are the only jobs affected by SI. As noted from the earlier section the Damage coefficient of a Marksman actually drops as they get stronger because Snipe is fixed damage. This chart was done assuming roughly a 15000 ranged buffed Marksman. However above that assumed range, Dark Knights might actually rank above them. Overall, the damage coefficients lined up with about what I expected going in. DPS classes do more DPS than support classes when hitting the same number of targets (NLs do more Damage than BMs and Heroes do more damage than DKs). Additionally, (almost) all classes have benefits and detriments making them fill different roles in raids. Meaning that when deciding what character to "Main" (almost) all the classes are viable. It is important to note that while all classes are viable to "main", certain raids require certain roles, meaning that all raids can't take all jobs all the time. I hope you all enjoyed reading these guide and actually took the time to understand the mathematics behind them!
DKs have higher than 0.6 mastery (0.8 from Beholder, I think). They came out to be slightly stronger than 2H Hero (without SI, with SE) for me. It might be worth using DPS as the primary metric (damage divided by cast time) since these classes have a wide range of attack speeds Your Pally section shouldn't need much changing since it didn't include HH anyway
Fixed the DK! didn't know that beholder altered the skill mastery. Might be something to put in the library @alex . DPS is kind of problematic because while the numbers work now, they shift when players start increasing their ranges or new systems come out. My damage coefficient method was meant to be a more permanent system to quantify the DPS between classes. However I do think the damage Coefficient number is tough to digest for the average person so I do plan on making a more reasonable "% of NL's damage" category for people to understand the number more easily.
With DK, I couldn't spot anything mentioning the fact that when using Berserk, SE's Damage also gets multiplied by 2, resulting in a 1.8x increase in damage on each proc instead of a 1.4x increase. This change also makes it so that the % increase in DPS from SE alone is higher than the % DPS increase from SI alone (assuming average luck of course) EDIT: After talking with Andy for a bit I realised that I have had a misconception about SE and Damage formulas in general. As @chensqi points out below, SE increases skill damage by 140%. Please disregard my entire post above
The misconception that @TheConArtist has here is a common one. Damage buffs in Maplesaga (and I'm assuming Maplestory v62 in general) are mostly additive. This means that for a skill that does 100% damage (ex. Rapid Fire) SE will give an additional 140% damage on crits, making crits do 240%. This is the case for all %-based damage buffs except Berserk and Homing Beacon/Bullseye. Both of these are multiplicative so Berserk doubles all your damage and Homing Beacon makes all your damage 20% higher (for that target).
For bucc's barrage, only the first 4 hits are 230%. I think the 5th hit is most likely 460% and the 6th is most likely 980%.
To be clear, you can just consider barrage as a 10-hit spell (5th line hits 2x and 6th line hits 4x). from https://ayumilovemaple.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/maplestory-formula-compilation/ One more thing - I feel Shadowers should have a lot more WA from gears. Neo shield, I think, gives 41WA and Execution Blade can be scrolled to 177wa after corruption (for a total of 72WA above NLs).