Originally Posted by
bulmabriefs144
I think the whole complaint of "too many classes" is misplaced. MapleStory's selling point appears to be churning out as many classes as possible (sorta like a D&D session where everyone saw a bunch of prestige classes, and said I don't like those, let's build our own).
The one that they're "too much alike", however, is spot on. There are too many heavy hitter magical classes, and heavy hitter physical classes. We need more effect classes, and to have bosses that are more elemental weak/strong.
Captain Latanica, for instance, should have a high miss chance versus physical attacks, and a low miss versus magical (especially fire and holy). Griffey and Manon being the 3rd job's final boss before 4th, should be okay with everyone, but griffey should be weak to thunder and certain archery effects (sky critters can get shot down), and Manon is especially weak to ice. This is probably already true to a certain extent, but it should be more so. Pink Bean? He could possibly change his weaknesses, and heal if magic type is wrong (since maple is a "kid's game" there might be some blatantly obvious cue what he's weak to now, it's just a matter of telling all the lightning mages to stop casting). Also, have statuses work on bosses, but they have a 10 second limit regardless of whether the effect would exceed it, and a cooldown where status doesn't effect them.
I think my idea for Geomancer was to have a more physical attack mage, and have the magic be more involved with effects. You get a few elemental spells, like flame wall (which is basically sort of a line of fire close to the ground that mobs enemies with initial fire damage, then does persistent damage to anything staying inside it or walking in it like a poison cloud (this cannot damage flying enemies)), and blizzard (which deals initial and persistent cold damage around you but persistent only if enemies are weak to cold). You get alot of other mass spells, but they're mostly effects (like entangle which deals no damage, but enemies can't move, only attack, while being held by this) and all spells are based on the terrain you're standing on, making it a mixed bag (like phantom, you can equip a spell, for each terrain provided it's compatible (there are like four choices for if you're standing on snow, a few for grass, for rock, etc)). This means of course that the flame wall and blizzard have limited effect, because the former only can work in a few places (like Zakum's mine) and the latter almost never works for persistent damage, since enemies in a snowfield are not typically weak to ice. Some terrain has unclear ground (like ludibrium), and instead relies on ley lines for magical casting (the Geomancer can use a Draw Magica skill, which gives them one of however many statuses that boils down to "use geomancy as if standing on [grass/snow/sand/rock/etc]").