just wanted to show you 🙂‍↔️

i relog 7 times and its still bugged

While most players are probably generally happy with the latest balance changes, I would like to comment on the balancing philosophy that I find dysfunctional.

Ark Grid's core idea was to give players options to play unique iterations of their class. In practice however, its evident that almost all classes have one very dominant ark grid, while the other 2 ark grid options are either severely inferior or not quite sense-making yet. They can be inferior because of 2 reasons: numerical undertuning and poor transfer rate.

a) Numerical Undertuning.
Their scaling is just not there. Example: Bards dominant ark grid provides 500 Identity Meter per counter, makes the counter stackable and increases the overall meter gain on hit. Bards non-dominant Ark Grid provides 30 Meter per Shield provided (so 30 shield x 4 players = 160). The non-dominant option would be a nice option to incentivise players to shielding their teammates, but its incompetetive because 30 is just too low.

b) Poor Transfer Rate.
Another reason is that an ark grid might be good on paper, but poor in raid execution. This can be called "transfer rate", and refers to the transfer from trixion parsing to a real raid scenario. Some examples include

• Ultimate Skill Taijutsu: Dragon Advent Ark Grid. This Ark Grid lowers your cooldown on "Dragon Advent" by 0.5 seconds, each time you cast a stamina skill. Sounds fun and good on paper, but in actual raids, the boss dies too quickly or phases too often. Additionally (but this is another topic), the ark grid forces you to choose a tripod that disables the push immunity on the skill, so its enforced lower QoL for higher damage - not quite the route I would force upon players, but what do I know.
• or Hunger Reapers "Critical Combination" Star Core: Hunger Reaper has an identity skill called "slaughter" (aka just a burst mode for 10 seconds). This Ark grid reduces the cooldown of this so that you can have higher uptime on this and cast it more often - well, in theory. In real raids, there is no difference in slaughterers cast between players with this ark grid vs. the dominant ark grid (which is just a stat stick with no gameplay changes whatsoever), because the boss dies too quickly or phases too often. In this scenario, choosing "critical combination" is like playing without a star core at all.

Now how does SmileGate go about balancing this?
Generally speaking, if one ark grid is overdominant for too long, they are likely to just nerf it. Lets create a simplified framework of this:
Ark Grid Option A is a solid 9/10.
Ark Grid Option B is a not-so-solid 6/10.
Ark Grid Option C is likely not sensemaking and will be ignored in this example - there are barely any classes with 3 potent ark grid options.

As a consequence, the vast majority of players will choose Ark Grid Option A - unregarding whether A or B is more fun, or what the Ark Grid actually implies. Naturally - and understandably so - players will try to pick the better Ark Grid Option, if the gap is very noticable. However, the idea behind Ark Grid is much rather that players choose an Ark Grid core that suits their preferences and playstyle more - rather than HAVING to pick Ark Grid A because its overcompetetive and outperforms everything by a good mile.

The problem now with simply nerfing Ark Grid Core A and calling it a day is illustrated in this graphic:

As you can see, SmileGates approach often provokes a lose-lose scenario. Since Ark Grid A is significantly stronger than the alternatives, it naturally becomes the choice for the vast majority of players. When SmileGate later responds by heavily nerfing that option, they also frustrate the majority of players who invested into it. (This also entails the problem that the ark grid system is very static: choosing an ark grid is often a long-term investment as they are not easily interchangable. Its crazy annoying if you finally collected all your ark grid cores, only to have it nerfed by substantial amount a few weeks later. This is a common complaint by players, understandably so.)

The alternative changes this paradigm: It still nerfs the dominant Ark Grid Option (because, well, it was objectively too strong also in interclass comparisons, so not nerfing is not an option), but the intensity of the nerf is slightly lower. As an addition, the non-dominant Ark Grid Option should be adjusted towards the top, so that both Ark Grid options meet in the middle (the middle here being between 9/10 and 6/10, NOT between 1/10 and 10/10). This way, the only reason why players vary in their choice of Ark Grid A or B will be which playstyle indication they PREFER (I know, mindblowing).

However, this is not as easy as implied. The transfer problem mentioned above makes this a difficult task. Sometimes, Ark Grids ARE similar in terms of strength or power, but have different use cases. One Ark Grid might incentivise high uptime in longer duration fights. Newer Raids, Progging Raids, Higher difficulties might benefit this. Another Ark Grid might focus on a bursty playstyle which doesnt require longer fighting durations. Balancing two complety opposing playstyles for one raid is a task that I would not want to do.

Nonetheless, the point stands that:
The only variance in player decision between Ark Grid A and Ark Grid B should be player preference, and not a discrepancy in objective power.

Disclaiming the argument knocking on the door:
Average Reddit User: "Well, then just dont meta slave and play what you want?". Welp, of course that would solve the issue, but that would also imply that you are never dealing competetive damage ever, in a competetive raiding game. The reason why the vast majority of players follow this behavior is very understandable. In my opinion, its not players that should adapt to poor balancing philosophies, but rather devs that should foster a balancing environment that allows players to pursue their preferences.

Yes, the balance patch was not bad, and yes, it also made me happy personally as my classes got buffed. But observing their long term balancing strategy - almost a year after Ark Grid released - this is a very striking pattern by SmileGate.

New to the game. Just started a Paladin and power pass. Very overwhelming for a new player. Any tips? Create a roadmap for me of what I should do every week. In order so I guess it’s easier to follow. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Did 3 of the new jumps in a row and the 3rd one bugged out and im now currently stuck outside of the map and cant do anything. Not really sure how to proceed im guessing i just lose my key though.

Hello am i the only one having an issue with this patch ? My characters are empty inventory even their gear dissapeard.only have m'y gold left.

had this in my drafts forever ago, decided to finish it up because i miss the idiot trio ૮₍ ´ ꒳ `₎ა
if LWC went differently and armen didn't go all emo and leave with kharmine

...i remember being like wtf when he went on his whole rant about being a secret delain and i'm just... right there...

waiting

Hi, i just started this game about 3 weeks ago with a couple of other friends that are new/returning, I chose bard, i like her and would like to stick with her.

Got to 1710 thanks to the help of my veteran friends who got me into this + express challenge. But since i wanted to learn the raid and not just get carried, myself and other new/returning players form a group amongst ourself to try out the 1700+ raids.

For party raid we only tried cathedral and serca. The rest we all did solo only.

My stats are not good. For serca since we got jailed for almost 6 hours before clearing, I got pretty familiar with its pattern so I could get around mid 80s buff efficiency, but for cathedral it stays on low-mid 70s.

One problem I have even when I'm getting familiarized with the boss pattern is that i have to constantly look at my skills cd and I can't focus on what the boss is doing, and when I'm focusing on the boss I would sometimes mess up my AP cycle. Any tips will be appreciated.

I know this is part of learning the raid and probably too advanced for me to be learning right now, but another thing that would help greatly is if you guys could teach me any common mech/pattern for all raids from to hold my guardian tune(for blocking the debuff attack) for. From echidna to kazeros raid.

Thanks!

A balance patch was datamined in kr

I am not an arcana player but from my understanding its a BIG nerf to the build

This is the important line

Before :

Lv 3: Damage to enemies +12.0%. Using other cards has a 20.0% chance to trigger Emperor Card effect. Emperor Card damage +80.0%.

After :

Lv 3: Damage to enemies +12.0%. Using other cards has a 20.0% chance to trigger Emperor Card effect. Emperor Card damage +40.0%.

And here is the link for the whole patch (might be janky since it’s not official yet)

Grandma stays locked in the cage until we get him 🤣! the earlier the better!

if you want granny to be freed we need action!

Daily Q&A and Open Discussion

Greetings adventurers! Please use this daily thread for simple questions and/or open discussion relating to anything Lost Ark. Enjoy!

Example:

What class should I play?

Which class is better?

I am new to the game, what should I do?

Should I play X class and why?

Same as title. Just wondering. Maybe we could join from time to time

It's pretty noticeable nerf on Emperor, though i don't think it will necessarily kill the class. huge nerf on emperor card dmg, spineflower, shuffle. since stackhold core dmg got nerfed, maybe should we use "emperor's heart" core? I'm just wondering if there is need to change any cores. imo, i feel like we wouldn't really need to change any, but i need to see enough data on this first.

i was wondering if checkmate build would actually do better this time. but it still really bothers me that Checkmate can't convert into normal skill like spineflower -_-. couldve been great

in the meantime, empress got 8-9% skill dmg buff. i'm not sure though if this worth enough to change back to empress build, but i'm possibly considering it.

I quit a year ago, usually lurk around some LoA related stuff and updates, but lately all I hear is people dooming about the dwindling playerbase and a likely EoS in January?

I used to enjoy this game a lot, best raids and combat in the MMO genre. Played through TFM 1 (Eclipse), Aegir, Brel V2 (Phantom Lord) and Mordum (LoT, formerly known as TM).

Cheers!

Hi guys im new player. I want to ask about Excavation. Is there an excavation spot where Abidos and Oreha drop, but Exotic doesn't? Exotic relics are too cheap.

While cutting an astrogem just let us get a one time use per astro gem "click to attain the option you want" button. So many astro gems have gone to waste just being 1 hit away. A single use click and get the option would fix a lot of the grief around this system. And also buff ancient core drop chance again. I have 7 characters I play every week since act4 and only 1 has 1, a singular, useable, ancient core.

Daily Q&A and Open Discussion

Greetings adventurers! Please use this daily thread for simple questions and/or open discussion relating to anything Lost Ark. Enjoy!

Example:

What class should I play?

Which class is better?

I am new to the game, what should I do?

Should I play X class and why?