Media The Current State Of Monster [mythic Wand] | Includes Proposal | Looking For Feedback!

Hello Wynncraft!

DISCLAIMER: This is simply MY OPINION of what a fire mythic wand should look like. I know that many players and Item Team Members will have different opinions, prefer the current wand more than my proposal. I am simply expressing my opinion. I do not think that it is extremely unbalanced right now

Today, I am here to address the current state of the Mythic Wand: Monster. As you guys may know, I am an avid monster user (maybe the only one these days xD) and although this thread is likely biased in places, I am going to try to stay objective as much as I can and not make this a long rant about it. Ok, here we go.

Monster's use rates have dropped significantly recently and its demand in the trade market is practically 0, due to the (sorta) recent changes regarding its intelligence, and also the heal nerf (it wasnt a nerf in general but it was a nerf for monster). Personally, I think it is very much still viable, but considerably weaker than other fire weapons in the sense that if you want to make a strong spell build with it, you need to sacrifice tankiness, or another core element of what you may want with a fire build. Now, of course, this was intended by the item makers, it is just my opinion that I would rather it be completely spell/completely melee.

Disclaimer: I am not saying there is not a great build out there that has tankiness and spell, I am yet to see one myself and am just speaking generally.

[If I am wrong please correct me here]
Just a little side note:
In addition, defense skill points as a whole are not actually what they seem. Rather than reduce all damage taken, they actually only reduce neutral damage. So while it says you are only taking 25% damage with a high defense build, if a mob does elemental damage you are going to be taking the full 100%. I am not sure if this is intended behavior or not, but regardless if you are sacrificing elemental defense in an attempt at a spell build, you are going to be crushed by elemental damages.

Then why not use melee?:
Obviously, this wand was not intended for use with spell builds, but rather with melee. But the problem is, melee quite weak compared to other melee wands. If you want ok damage, you are going to have to sacrifice a lot. For example, here is a generic melee build that is typically viable with earth and fire weapons:

With Monster: https://wynndata.tk/s/zSdGha
With Gaia: https://wynndata.tk/s/3kcwID

- In this case, while the tankiness is pretty nice overall, you are doing around ~5k dps with monster, while using a similar build with gaia however, you can still be kinda tanky (no glass cannon) and still do well more than 2x the damage, close to 13k. You basically sacrifice some health for double the damage, which I would take any day. Now, many would say that its the defense skill points are what make the difference - Monster is not going to take the hits, while Gaia will. Except, Monster will still be taking 100% elemental damage from mobs (correct me if I am wrong again please), so the difference against high level bosses will actually not be that great.

What do I propose?
This is a TANK WAND that still takes damage, that barely does damage in its intended field (melee), and makes it extremely difficult to pull off a viable spell build.

This is why I recommend a revamp (NOT A BUFF) of monster. To be honest, I don't think that it is very unbalanced right now, but it is unable to achieve the tankiness that one might want with a fire weapon if you want either spell OR melee. With this new proposal, I have gone away from the melee aspect in favor of spell to help remedy its current issues.

Using Wynndata's item creation system, I have created what I would love to see in game as a fire wand. IN MY OPINION it is much more of a spell based wand that will be much more widely used than the current melee one which is ineffective in comparison with Gaia at melee.

[I DO NOT WANT THIS TO BE OP/UNDERPOWERED - IM's IF IT NEEDS BALANCING LMK]


As you can see, it has a TON THE SAME AS THE CURRENT WAND. I wanted to stick with its roots, because Monster is not very unbalanced. As you can see, I have added -life steal, but +mana steal, gave it positive spell buffs (spell damage, reflection), and gave it some positive intel.

Why?
I wanted to make this item balanced. I know I still need some practice, but I am getting better. But more importantly, as a Monster user, I wanted to make sure that it did not seem like I just wanted to give Monster a buff, because I don't. I wanted to remake Monster into a spell based wand because it does not really compare to gaia in the melee department. I think the new one can match up to other mythic wands with this spell-based one.

Now, I will go through the ID's I have added:
- life steal --> if you want to take advantage of that mana steal, you are going to need to use it to heal yourself a bit
- Mana Steal --> while it is a spell wand, I did not want to take away from the fire portion of it, and thought this was a great middle ground between a total water weapon and a fire weapon
- Walk Speed --> just gives it a small little nerf, nothing huge
- Melee Damage Nerf/Spell Damage Buff --> kinda obvious
- Thorns to Reflection --> Reflection is more spell-based than thorns
- Intel buff --> the -intel was a huge problem with the old spell monster, so with a spell-based wand I think its fair to reverse this

Thanks, everyone, for reading! I want to make sure nobody takes this as a rant. I am just talking about what I would like to see as a fire wand in the future, and I am not saying that the Item Team did a bad job making Monster, nor am I upset with them in any way. As I said, I do not have a massive issue with the current Monster, but I feel it is kinda hedged between spell and melee that makes it slightly weak on both sides.

Please NO FLAME WARS ON MY THREAD xD

Thanks <3

 

The manasteal-lifesteal concept is already used in Lament, and I think making the wand spell-tank doesn't fit at all with the concept and lore. The lore suggests that the wand essentially turns you into a monster (hence the name), and increases your physical aspects, so a monster wielding magic kinda doesn't make sense.

 

I think the life steal mana steal is something new to introduce to this wand, and to be honest lament doesn’t really make use of the interaction like monster would.

To be honest though I agree the lore may have to be changed - thanks for this feedback!

 

"hey this mythic is good but cheap, lets entirely rework it and remove all of its current ids and add new ones because why not"

 

This is 100% not what I am saying and 100% not the point of this thread. Please read all of my arguments before posting something rash like this and take a closer look at the new version because I didn’t change that much.

 

Just a few points
1) We did lower the req on monster, which makes it much easier to use in general. It's pretty shocking how much impact a 5 req drop is when it's above 100
2) Just because an item is undesirable doesn't mean that it is nessesarily bad or needs a buff
3)While you are correct about Defense only affecting neutral damage, even very elemental mobs tend to do ~50% of their damage through neutral
4)Adding IDs to items has to be done with caution, especially to mythics. Your redesign has us adding major IDs that would vastly change its value as an item(Mana steal), and adding them would cause people to get a random roll on them, potentially changing their monsters value dramatically
5)We cannot completely change mythics like this. We just can't. Imagine being happy that you found a mythic that suits you after so much work and then suddenly it is completely changed
6) Your proposal looks a lot like lament, when mythics are supposed to try to be unique

 

You know, instead of instantly bashing on the thread and essentially ignoring the entire point of it, you take the time to be open minded and hear out a community members opinion on the item. I'm fairly sure this is a contributing factor to the apparent lack of communication between the item team and the community, hence why the community gets so frustrated with the item team so often.

 

Thanks for the feedback! To be honest I agree with a lot of it, ill just go through them quickly:
1) Aight fair point
2) I am not saying that it needs a buff or that it is bad, but because it is undesireable a rework could maybe help it out
3) Oh ok thanks did not know that :)
4-5) Totally understand
6) Yeah I can kinda see that, but to be honest this is how many people are trying to use Monster. I think it would be much more enjoyable to use this way (just my opinion)

Thanks again :) - again I agree with most of what you are saying and appreciate your feedback <3

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thank you
I am not really annoyed with the Item Team right now I think they are doing a good job but agree with your point xD

 

Ummmm
The item team in general tries to be open with the community, and while we don't always succeed, I'm hoping that we are doing okay. If you every want to discuss an item or something send any IM a message and I'm sure they will be willing to talk. Also we have started posting all the changes we are going to make on the rebalance thread, so that we can hear feedback on them and alert people on changes in their builds. If you have any suggestions on how we can better hear things from the community as a whole, please PM me(don't wanna derail this thread any further) I'd love to know!

 

I completely agree, improvements have certainly been made. I just feel it's necessary for criticism to put forth in a constructive manner, not sarcastic remarks intended to attract likes.

 

except it kind of is?

it dont really see any other argument as to why it needs a change

you added 5 ids and removed 4
if that isnt much then i dont know what is

its one of the highest hp weapon in the game and it doesnt even have -spell, that doesnt make a whole lot of sense

thats a problem with the current melee meta, not much we can do about it without having to change the entire game
if you dont wanna use melee then sure go ahead it doesnt have -50% spell and -1k raw so i fail to see how thats an issue

i still stand to my statement, thats just a rework for the sake of making an item more valuable and more widely used even though its unnecessary because its already balanced

 

It is easy to bash on the item team for not “listening to feedbacks” while in fact we do listen, but your feedback isn’t sound enough to be used

People don’t want their feedbacks to be listened, they want it to be used. It’s almost like “hey I said something now it must go in game otherwise you’re not listening” this is not how communication works. Improvements? Heck, this is beyond improvements. The item team is basically the customer service of wynncraft that almost respond to most sounded feedback post/argument there is. Why does people still think we don’t listen? coz we are critical. Instead of shining you shoes and making you happy we tell you what’s wrong with your suggestions. What makes us qualify to do so? We hv experienced in game and item balancing. So at the end of the day, are you discontent that your feedback aren’t listened? Or your feedback aren’t used.

Not to mentioned if your feedback is used, we can’t tell you that, at least not until it’s actually implemented

The other item team members have explained the viability of this suggestion. We have to look at multiple factors including the most important, community, when balancing items, especially mythics. It’s easy to instantly delete every imbalance mythic there is in the game and remake them to be perfectly balanced, but we can’t, and we won’t. As simple as that

Sorry for being quite on edge today, some of the comments I see in this post baselessly and cleverly twist the words to disregard a lot of item team’s effort which ticks me off a lot

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While I said what I said, I know and we know a lot of the community members have different ideas and takes on items especially mythics, and we understand that sometimes it’s good to let off some steam and remake a mythic while slapping the item team 300 times while you’re at it.

Which is why I strongly recommend everyone to look forward to next week’s themed custom item challenge that will be updating in around 7 hours from now! hint hint :D

 

I honestly have no problem with the feedback from the item team so far, I think you guys do a fantastic job of listening to our feedback and ideas. (Except for that one post above that was clearly for the likes)
I ALWAYS try to put thought and effort into my posts and responses, and in no way do I want to upset ANYBODY with this post.

"It’s almost like “hey I said something now it must go in game otherwise you’re not listening” this is not how communication works."
I am not upset about myself not being listened to or my ideas not being used, I can 100% understand your feedback. This post was to simply voice my opinion on what could be done to a particular weapon, I have no intentions of you guys acting like a customer service or you guys implementing this in game if you do not think it is suitable.

"Why does people still think we don’t listen? coz we are critical. Instead of shining you shoes and making you happy we tell you what’s wrong with your suggestions."
I seriously appreciate this kind of feedback! I personally think you guys do a great job of listening to the community, and the well thought through comments (for example ones coming from @Pokextreme were very helpful) to ideas like this one are valuable to me.

"The other item team members have explained the viability of this suggestion. We have to look at multiple factors including the most important, community, when balancing items, especially mythics."
100% understand, I don't have a problem with it not being added, I was simply voicing an opinion

"some of the comments I see in this post baselessly and cleverly twist the words to disregard a lot of item team’s effort"
Would that mean my post? I do not think I have said anything against the item team :3 again I think you guys are doing a great job

 

Not your post, in general I think and hope most of the community are as critical as you are. But there are some people that just like to bash on us baselessly. I took advantage of your thread to let off some steam and did a small psa, sorry about that

 

lol no problem :) I can totally understand how that can get annoying
I appreciate your feedback regardless, as well as all the other item team members that have provided helpful feedback.

 

I'm not bashing on anyone or anything here other than the useless remark above intended to attract likes. The item team does listen to the community, but if a member of the community puts in the time and effort into a thread like this to try and state their opinion, and potentially help out, the criticism given should be equally constructive, no? I'f the feedback isn't sound enough to be used, but clear effort was put into it, shouldn't the criticism given state the reasons as to why it cant/shoudn't be implemented?

I'm fairly sure no one on this thread thinks in this way. Maybe you have seen other people with this view on communication and feedback, which in that case I'd imagine that to be extremely frustrating. I know you guys listen, in fact I'm beyond impressed with the item team given the amount of work you guys do, and the effort that's put in.

I'm not sure if you are referring to my comments above, but if you are, let me go ahead and apologize and clarify that I am not disregarding the item team's efforts in the slightest. I'm grateful for the sheer amount of work you guys put in at no cost other than your own time.

 

I 100% agree - we were just a little upset with blowww's post that was bashing my thread in an attempt for likes and some IMs got upset with Avid's comment about frustration with the item team.

I would prefer if all arguments ended here, because I did not want this thread to upset anybody and we can all agree on basically everything mentioned here and in my post above. I appreciate everybody's constructive feedback <3 I put a lot of effort into this suggestion, and although I don't expect anything to come of it in game think it was a helpful outlet to voice an opinion to the community.

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that basically sums up my opinion xD

 

So this thread has magically transformed into one about the performance of the item team

In any case, I think monster should lose an attack speed tier (with a damage buff to compensate), and gain some defense, health, and some thorns, maybe at the expense of it's strength buff. That way it's better at the power fantasy of "invincible monster that hits like a truck and can't be touched" while being more viable for attack speed builds.

 

The item team actually tried this attack speed idea, but then reverted it back - it does not really affect the spell but I agree it definitely helps for the melee aspect :)
Thanks for the input!

 

Ok first of all, I am also an avid monster user, I have 50/50 thoughts on this after using it for quite a long while now, here's the reason...

I really love monster's concept, that's why I bought it in the first place, it has that unique playstyle which I find to be lackingly available for mage, and that playstyle is "Hybrid"
Sure, rework it, change stuff to it but, Completely changing its unique aspect would make it look bad than it is now,
what I would propose is atleast make it abit more tankier or give it abit more damage, reason for this is because of that Healing system change,
rn its performance seems to be rather... "Slow" per say, its dps is very low, which by damage I would prefer nepta more due to it having you support in attacking, aka Mana regen,
Fire weapons are meant to be tanky as i recall, This, isn't, tanky, thats the issue with it, the #1 reason i wanted to buy it is so i can have a way of surviving long enough with Mage with atleast trading damage for it, but instead i got greeted with this:

Nepta damage but high requirements (Int problem)
Mana regen lacking
Going down litterally half my health after 2 full seconds of charging in battle, (I can be one shotted by Wybel and Death Metal)

Sure it deals heavy amounts of melee damage but, you would rather use gaia and if it were intended for melee, wouldn't that be Ununique?