Vindictus : Evie revamp Developer’s Note

General Direction



First we believed that both staff and scythe required better survival. After Season 1 monsters started to show more variety in their attacks but Blink is too slow in its transition to other actions and Mana Amber would be knocked away too far away causing DPS loss or not work at all. So we’ve decided to handle these issues with this revamp.

Second, we wanted to emphasis the caster element of staff. We wanted to address the situation where only a few select spells were being used and improve the ways spells can be casted to better represent player skill. A new large scale spell has been added to match Evie’s image as a powerful caster. Along with that we’ve improved her survival, adjusted her spells, improved mobility and fixed some bugs.

Third, scythe has been designed around keywords such as darkness, death, and grim reaper. Her skills like Life Steal, Death Label, Bloody Tread are utilized with drains and releases. While this system well represents the concept of scythe it became difficult to use in the current combat environment. So we revamped scythe’s drain and release, added a new skill, and improved her existing skills.

Shared changes

Mana Shield revamp

The previous version of Mana Shield wasn’t affected by defense and thus was only reliable against low level monsters. Now Mana Shield will provide better protection against powerful monsters with character defense added to Mana Shield’s equation. Increasing the skill rank of Mana Shield will now increase the absorb amount at a fixed rate since it will be affected by defense. A couple bugs related with Mana Shield will also be fixed.

Improved Revive

Revive may have contributed to the party but at the cost of the caster’s own efficiency. So from now on we wanted to show a little appreciation for these selfless Evies. After the exhausted state from using a Revive, that Evie will receive a one minute buff that increases action speed and stamina regeneration.

Stamina skills added

Evie didn’t have stamina skills such as Combat Respiration since she was designed as a physically weak character who relied on magic and alchemy. But we have decided that this design no longer works with the current direction of the game and balancing. So we have added stamina skills for Evie.

Staff

1. Mana Amber revamp

While designing Sigrint we made his unable to snatch up an Evie in Mana Amber and the skill was a good defense method up till then. But Mana Amber became obsolete with continued updates and new monsters and became a hindrance to DPS as it caused the user to be batted far away from battle. Which is why Mana Amber has been revamped and now appears as a sphere instead of an erg. It also no longer breaks or bounce around. The stamina recovery during Mana Amber and the short invulnerability after releasing it has been removed but it can now defend all attacks except for unblockable attacks like all other characters.

The casting motion has been removed so Mana Amber will immediately cover Evie mid-action. That action will resume after Mana Amber has been released. But Mana Amber can’t be used during stationary focus. This is because we believe that being able to pause focus with Mana Amber could mess with the traits of other characters and present balance issues.

The command for Mana Amber has changed to a single press of the evasion key while not pressing any movement directions. This can be used in various situations such as while firing Magic Arrows, right after using a focus spell, or during a Flying Sparrow. But the stamina cost for using Mana Amber right after a focus spell is increased for balancing purposes.

There’s also a 0.3 second delay between continued use of Mana Amber and cannot be released until at least a second has passed. This is also for balance since we want to keep balance between character survival mechanisms, not give a straight out buff for Mana Amber.

2. Elemental Mastery revamp

Fire, Ice, and Lightning Master has been changed to be more effective.

Buff icons have been added and using a different element will no longer erase Masteries that have already procced. This is in order to allow players to freely use any spell they want.

The effect of Masteries has been improved as well so that they will progressively increase damage at the second and third use of a certain element. The damage increase from Ice Mastery is relatively small but instead greatly increases stun rate for easier break-offs. Lightning spells will receive stamina recovery at the second and third use. The effect of the third use increases with each skill rank. We hope that this allows Evies to use their spells more strategically.

3. Mobile Focus

The original focus stays in one place and thus is a stationary focus. Mobile focus has been added.

It was difficult to handle new monsters with a stationary focus and Casting Save is difficult to use mid-combat. Mobile Focus now allows a staff Evie to focus while giving chase to a monster and stopping her movement will switch her to stationary focus. Spells can’t be casted during mobile focus so you need to stop moving and switch to stationary focus to cast the spell.

Even with mobile focus there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to attack your target so we’re expecting to see an even mixture of keeping a good distance after a mobile focus to use Casting Save and just going in to attack immediately.

4. New tier5 focus skill, Raze

While Evie does not suffer from a lack of number of skills, she doesn’t have a large scale spell matching her status as a powerful mage. Reverse Gravity and Meteor Swarm are not staff exclusive and also are usually only used once per battle due to its long cooldown.

So Raze, a spell that gathers mana in a staff to release at a long distance, has been added. Evie won’t receive damage from most sources while she starts the preparation action for casting. The cast itself lasts for 5 seconds in the form of Mana flow that can be aimed. The casting time is decreased to 2.5 seconds in PvP. As Raze is a powerful spell, we expect its cooldown to be set at 2 minutes and a half.

5. Improved skills

First, the distance of Flying Sparrow has been increased to twice its length in exchange for doubling its stamina cost so that it can be properly used as an escape method while not being abused as a movement method. You can also focus or move after a Flying Sparrow or normal evasion more quickly.

Second is a list of spells that have been changed.

-SP gain for spells changed.

-Increased AoE for Fire Storm

-Fire shock can now pierce its target and ground.

-Tracking function added to Lighting Wave.

-Regeneration maintains its effect even after the caster has died.

We’ve deeply considered the feedback we received for these changes. The SP gain for only Fire Shock has been reduced and Ice Blow, Lightning Wave, and Lightning Guide had their SP gain increased. So now Lightning spells are best for gaining SP, Fire spells are good for damage, and Ice spells are good for its stun rate.

Fire spells are the way to go for someone who aims solely for damage but we expect that players will feel the need to utilize different elements strategically to benefit from the improved Masteries.

6. Increased rank cap

Focus can now be learned up to rank B in order to use the new tier 5 spell and several other spells had their rank cap increased.

7. Bug fixes

We fixed an issue with an Evie’s Paladin skill causing her to fall to 0 defense, focusing while with no stamina causing a cast to cancel and only incur a stamina cost, and fixed Evie’s unnaturally fast movement while at 0 stamina.





Scythe

1. Blink revamp

In the past Blink was one of the best survival mechanism with its long invulnerability frame and travel distance. But, as mentioned earlier, the combat environment has changed and Blink in its current state is cumbersome with its inability to avoid combo attacks or quickly convert to attacking after use.

The new revamped Blink can be used in twice in a row by pressing the evasion key right before Evie’s feet hits the ground. You’ll use up more stamina this way but you can avoid combo attacks safely in exchange.

Also the command for Blink has been changed to a single input. When Blink isn’t learned, pressing the evasion key will make Evie do her default evasion hop and when Blink is learned, she will immediately use Blink at a single evasion keystroke.

The transition between Blink and attack combos or an additional blink has been sped up. Additionaly, Evie can us Blink Moonlight or normal attack combos as soon as she uses Blink.

2. Drain and Release revamp

Scythe Evie’s combat pattern is similar to other melee characters in the fact that she uses normal attack combos which lead to a smash but she also need to use drain and release for her full potential. But this process takes a long time and the monsters aren’t just going to wait there for Evie to finish.

In order to remedy the difficulty of completing a drain, we’ve made drains apply right after a smash attack hits. Damaging an enemy with Demon Splitter will immediately give you a life steal effect and damaging an enemy with Invisible Loom will immediately give you a Bloody Thread effect. And when you use drain, you’re effect from your smash will be enhanced.

So the actual action for drain now gives you an additional award for taking a risk. Release from enhanced drains does more damage and the increase is greater than that of using multiple drains.

Due to the addition of enhanced drains, the bonus from multiple drains has been removed. This was done to remove rigid attack patterns and allow Scythe Evies to use smashes according to their situation. Once again we would emphasize that the damage bonus from enhanced drains are greater than the bonus from releasing multiple drains.

3. Sacrifice

Sacrifice is currently being used automatically when releasing multiple drains and it will become a passive skill with this revamp. Sacrifice will be removed from the quickslot and will be automatically used when using any release.

4. Improved Confusion Hole

The limited power and use of Confusion Hole made it a skill that was only used on normal monsters occasionally. So we’ve changed Confusion Hole so that its damage is more fitting for its 250 SP cost and made Smash Mastery effect its damage. A new method of using it has also been added. By pressing the grapple key during Eagle Talon, Evie will use Confusion Hole on her previous target if that target is in range.

The graphics for Confusion Hole has been optimized to reduce its effect on performance. We hope to see Confusion Hole used with between managing SP.

5. Smash Skills added

Smash skills have been added for Hell Quake, Soul Skewer, and Invisible Loom.

6.New skill, Fear Scream

Fear Scream is an add-on attack to the existing add-on attack on Demon Splitter [LR]. Fear Scream has life steal and stamina recovery on hit and pulls Evie’s scythe in the opposite direction so some directional control is needed to use this skill.

Blink Moonlight has been changed as well to allow the use of Demon Splitter’s add-on attack. So you can use Blink->Blink Moonlight->Demon Splitter add-on attack->Fear Scream to pursue your target and recover your stamina at the same time.

7. New Skill, Arcane Gate

Arcane Gate is a skill that improves on Scythe Evie’s characteristic. Evie will go in and out of the dark realm to attack her enemy. The skill requires at least 750 SP to use and will deplete all SP when used.

Evie will slash open a rift to another realm when she used Arcane Gate. While she is in the other realm, Evie is almost invulnerable but can’t stay in place. She can change the direction she moves and choose when to attack. But be wary of when to attack because Evie can receive damage while attacking and taking damage will cancel the skill.

Staying too long in the dark realm will also cancel the skill and Evie can attack 5 times with Arcane Gate. Each attack will apply a drain in order and the fifth attack will release all the drains she has. The fourth attack is especially important because it needs to hit in order to deal additional damage with the final attack. It is important to note that all drains and releases decreases the cooldown for Arcane Gate so it is crucial to perform Scythe Evie’s basic actions.

-Arcane Gate does not knock down or make enemies flinch.

8. Fixes for existing skills

The time it took for the transition between LLLL and Invisible Loom has been decreased in order to make scythe Evie’s motion more fluid.

Blink Moonlight can’t be used two times in a row in exchange for adding Demon Splitter’s add-on attack to it.

The DoT from Death Label will persist after using release. Higher skill ranks will increase the damage from the DoT and it will be affected by magic attack. The duration has also been increased so we hope to see it used more strategically.

9. Skill cap increased

Blink, Blink Moonlight, and Confusion Hole can be learned up to rank 8.

10. Battle Scythe titles added

5 titles for Battle Scythe have been added. This was overdue.

11. Bug fixes

-fixed the issue where R has been unintentionally used after using a drain.

-fixed an issue where Evie will pick up an object close to her instead of using drain.

-fixed the issue that cause Confusion Hole to be used in the direction of the character regardless of the option settings and removed the repeating sound effect.

-fixed an issue where Evie will be shown briefly during a Blink

We’re also fixing the bugs on Meteor Swarm which is not included on the test server update.