Anon Raja

Back in 2017. I wrote a Yama Raja guide to share with my friends the joy of playing the class. With their encouragement, I made it public and have since been working on guides for the rest of the Ara classes as well. Feel free to send me any questions or comments through an Ask if you so desire. sorcererniles made the image that appears on my page on the desktop version of tumblr. I was Mod Sourcream on elsnark.

[anonraja]

Changelog #69 - Shakti Guide Rewrite

Shakti

Completely rewritten

Formatting kept fucking up on the previous doc so I had to make a new one

Old link is NOT available anymore since there weren't major changes to Shakti's overall kit with the 4/22/26 patch

Surya

Fixed some values

Devi's next.

[anonraja]

KoG really constantly validates my love for Ara in the silliest ways.

[anonraja]

Changelog #68 - Surya Guide Rewrite

Surya

Completely rewritten

Yes, I still dunk on her.

And, yes, I am very proud of the images I made for this.

Is this guide perfect? Probably not, but I'm really frustrated with the state of the game right now, especially the effect on healers.

Shakti will be up next.

[anonraja]

Oh fu--

I forgot to mention the previous Surya guide has been legacied due to the vast changes from the recent patch. This allows us to view how she used to be in one convenient location. The legacy guide uses the old link while the rewritten one is a new link.

You can find links to all the guides, including legacy versions, here.

[anonraja]

Changelog #68 - Surya Guide Rewrite

Surya

Completely rewritten

Yes, I still dunk on her.

And, yes, I am very proud of the images I made for this.

Is this guide perfect? Probably not, but I'm really frustrated with the state of the game right now, especially the effect on healers.

Shakti will be up next.

[anonraja]

I could not find a blank version of this so here have a meme template.

[anonraja]

Aps seems to be more or less the same in terms of overall damage. I haven't played her in a raid yet so.

While Devi wasn't nerfed back to pre-2015 reboot levels, the decrease in power is very noticeable. Her new CD reduction system is also a bit... awkward? Before, you could just pop Purgatory and have all your skills back, now you should theoretically profit more off of using skills that aren't Purgatory, yet sometimes my skills are not off cooldown. It feels like the CD change did nothing since Purgatory is still the most reliable way to get your skills back. Maybe I just need time to adjust and should just shake up my usual rotation though.

Shakti feels more or less the same as pre-balance. The soul orb MP nerf hurts, but it's fine.

Surya... how do I put this... I think they messed something up in the calculation of Skill Cost in general. With maxed Skill Cost stat, I spend 30 MP more than when compared to 20% Skill Cost. For Surya's new MP Cost Reduction buff, I'm consistently somehow spending 10 MP more or 1 MP less (there is no in-between) compared to when it's not active. I tested this between Free Training and a dungeon just to make sure it wasn't some weird bug in Free Training and it doesn't appear to be. I hope I'm just misreading my MP bar, but I don't think I am. I also don't see people noticing this in the Discord server so hm...

[anonraja]

Just a head's up.

I'm considering rewriting all my Ara guides once the recent KR balance patch hits NA/INT since there's a lot of changes. I know for a fact I'll be doing a full rewrite for my Surya one as she has arguably the most differences from pre-balance -> post-balance and I don't want to make a dumb mistake while editing so a fresh start would be best. I'm just debating on if Aps, Devi, and Shakti changed enough to justify a full rewrite or if there's some things that are simply dated that I've overlooked for awhile.

[anonraja]

Found time to skim through them. Apsara's still seems okay, but Devi's and Shakti's both have things that are so dated it's funny.

So! Surya rewrite first followed by Shakti then Devi. The Surya rewrite will probably take the most time while Shakti's should be relatively quick, no idea if I'll be memeing for Devi or not so no clue how long that one will take. No, really, I'm partially convinced Devi's going back to pre-2015/2016 reboot power levels. It would be funny in the saddest way if she is.

I'll just update Apsara's when I find the time.

[anonraja]

I'm just now seeing that NA put up a notice for the balance patch.

Let's zoom in.

NA really just gave Apsara's Suppression a subtitle after 13 years. I'm scratching my head at why this took so long and why they even bothered.

Honestly, I'm still not convinced Apsara will have the damage to compete with other DPS even after her damage buffs. My Shakti with reset tenebrous is out damaging significantly higher CP Aps with red exa and I don't think that's going to change. At best, it's likely her damage will just be comparable to lower CP/arguably worse gear Shakti. I do think the removal of her party buffs will hurt her.

Even after all these years, even after separating duration between PvE and PvP, Repel is still stuck to 10 seconds in PvE. Please. Buff it to like 15 seconds. Please. I am begging. The 4% increase to Repel also doesn't make up for the fact Terror of Rakshasa was nerfed to 5%. Are we actually back in the do not pass go, do not collect $200 phase of playing Devi? Wholly possible her overall damage is still fine, but I'm nervous.

Shakti really is not all that different, she's still going to be reliable. She might rely more on [Mod] Fox Fire for damage again, but eh. It is what it is.

I will never understand why they moved Surya's Suppression effects to Howling Fox. Did they just finally think [Mod] Suppression did too much? Overall, it reads like she's still going to have slot issues, but at least she doesn't require Convert anymore.

I'm also not sure if the changes to Joining actually helps Surya's MP management issues in any significant way, but we'll see.

[anonraja]

Just a head's up.

I'm considering rewriting all my Ara guides once the recent KR balance patch hits NA/INT since there's a lot of changes. I know for a fact I'll be doing a full rewrite for my Surya one as she has arguably the most differences from pre-balance -> post-balance and I don't want to make a dumb mistake while editing so a fresh start would be best. I'm just debating on if Aps, Devi, and Shakti changed enough to justify a full rewrite or if there's some things that are simply dated that I've overlooked for awhile.

[anonraja]

Love how the dev team is quadrupling down on making leveling even easier. New players already don't know how to play their character when they hit 3rd job and it's questionable if they actually learn much by the time they reach Master Class, but they outright don't if they make a character through one of those jump events. But the outright removal of more dungeons better ensures they barely understand the basics of the game as a whole.

Adding a +10 SoA wep to Prof Pho is... a choice. I completely understand it's to streamline progression. But it is, like everything else, a band-aid. I don't mind armor being easier to obtain, I've always hated the lack of choice and how everyone is pigeonholed into one thing so, sure, give that out and make it easier to build. If armor wasn't so RNG upon RNG stacked naturally maybe I would mind, but as it stands, whatever makes building armor easier. I do mind weapons since it further ensures players don't need to learn any mechanics. They need to just hope some hyper carry is available so they can safely continue being ignorant of the game's mechanics. But Serpentium raid is so mechanic heavy that even in solo you're forced to interact with them. I already question how people pushed through Abyss Raid from past SoA events are supposed to deal with Serpentium Raid. For example, Orchestra Hall itself has a mechanical callback to Altar of Invocation. Everyone being pushed through Pruinaum? They don't have that knowledge. They're going to just struggle because they've never had to interact with the game in a meaningful way.

The game's progression is too fucked to actually implement real fixes and these decisions further fuck it up. I don't think people who have been playing for years would actually mind if progression was actually streamlined instead of all these band-aids.

... Wait... no. They would. Because "we had to figure it out, we've already done all the work, therefore it doesn't need to be easier". Like, bitch, no. Content that's 4+ years old should be made easier with progression actually implemented in a way that's logical with the overall intent to force you to interact with the game in a meaningful way.

[anonraja]

I love my Aras too much to fully quit. It's a curse.

Oh, I honestly think the jump events should be more strict.

2 or more characters registered in collection

At least 1 Master Class registered in collection

At least 1 Raid Weapon in account (I'd prefer if it's VoS, but that's somewhat demanding)

Have clear data for Varnimyr Raid or Pruinaum Raid in account

I believe these are the very basics of having a bare bones understanding of Elsword and how progression works.

Mechanics are a different issue entirely. The new Henir helps, but it's locked to 5mil CP and it only shows mechs for Abyss+. It doesn't really explain anything and I have suffered trying to understand some Doom Aporia mechs since info on that raid is still so sparse. If they made something like the new Henir as an in-game tutorial for mechs before you do the corresponding raid then it would honestly be a step in the right direction, but, no, that's too hand holdy (legitimately someone said this months back in the Discord server). I don't feel like Varnimyr needs a tutorial, that raid's been significantly dumbed down. But Pruinaum? Yes. It needs one, especially since Altar of Dedication has been nerfed to the ground so you don't even get an actual introduction to banned skills. Optional guides online aren't enough since there are people who just aren't willing to Google or YouTube.

My own partner who mains support would rather suffer through the dungeons to learn. I had to write him a whole ass guide for Abyss since he was so confused and he didn't want to go to other sources. I then had to bully him to actually read it. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. He is that stubborn and I'm sure there are a plethora of players who are like him.

[anonraja]

Love how the dev team is quadrupling down on making leveling even easier. New players already don't know how to play their character when they hit 3rd job and it's questionable if they actually learn much by the time they reach Master Class, but they outright don't if they make a character through one of those jump events. But the outright removal of more dungeons better ensures they barely understand the basics of the game as a whole.

Adding a +10 SoA wep to Prof Pho is... a choice. I completely understand it's to streamline progression. But it is, like everything else, a band-aid. I don't mind armor being easier to obtain, I've always hated the lack of choice and how everyone is pigeonholed into one thing so, sure, give that out and make it easier to build. If armor wasn't so RNG upon RNG stacked naturally maybe I would mind, but as it stands, whatever makes building armor easier. I do mind weapons since it further ensures players don't need to learn any mechanics. They need to just hope some hyper carry is available so they can safely continue being ignorant of the game's mechanics. But Serpentium raid is so mechanic heavy that even in solo you're forced to interact with them. I already question how people pushed through Abyss Raid from past SoA events are supposed to deal with Serpentium Raid. For example, Orchestra Hall itself has a mechanical callback to Altar of Invocation. Everyone being pushed through Pruinaum? They don't have that knowledge. They're going to just struggle because they've never had to interact with the game in a meaningful way.

The game's progression is too fucked to actually implement real fixes and these decisions further fuck it up. I don't think people who have been playing for years would actually mind if progression was actually streamlined instead of all these band-aids.

... Wait... no. They would. Because "we had to figure it out, we've already done all the work, therefore it doesn't need to be easier". Like, bitch, no. Content that's 4+ years old should be made easier with progression actually implemented in a way that's logical with the overall intent to force you to interact with the game in a meaningful way.

[anonraja]

It's my 9 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

This is so cringey. I love it.

[anonraja]

[anonraja]

Been thinking about it and I still don't know how to feel about the CP recalculation that went live in KR recently. While I don't mind different math, it feels really weird when I think it was just last year they recalculated values to boost CP overall and now they've decided to just nuke the values into oblivion. Though I don't think this fixes the core issue: CP values are very arbitrary. What gives the most value is now unknown and what actually grants damage will likely still have a low value (Baryon's Fur and Demonic Vine Crown are the most obvious examples). At this stage, they may as well just reintroduce item level since CP clearly is very hard for them to make work in a way that makes sense.

Abyss Raid went from 5mil -> 270k. Does this mean people with 270k will be able to do it comfortably? Probably not even with the HP reduction. The same issues are liable to continue sticking around where you need significantly more CP than necessary to comfortably clear since other defensive stats were left untouched and a lot of our character's buffs and debuffs were nerfed... except for the select few who were still allowed their 20% debuff for some reason. It's just that now our brains are going to be tricked into thinking it'll be easier since we're so accustomed to the current system.

[anonraja]

Although it's been nearly five years at this stage, there are days I still get so mad if I think about Failure Master from @elsnark. Dude was straight up a bad friend when it mattered. I had my moments where I definitely wasn't the greatest friend and I do acknowledge that. But, also, my moments aren't even comparable to his (and this isn't even me trying to downplay). His moments were so unforgiveable overall that I can't comprehend it.

FailureMaster maintained a friendship with two abusers of mine that he knew. These were my ex and a mutual friend. FailureMaster was given hard evidence of the abuse on multiple occasions, especially since I wanted to be sure I wasn't going crazy about the mutual friend. He just kinda shrugged it off and also outright told me, "well, they don't treat me that way". Bro. While I know you don't necessarily need to cut contact with someone because of how they treat someone else, there should be some type of self-preservation that kicks in and goes, "wait, if they treat this other person like that then there's a chance they could turn on me", especially after the former mutual friend was kicked out of another group that FailureMaster was a part of. He didn't tell me the details about why, but I'm sure I can guess the motivation behind that person's poor behavior since the main people in that other group were women. Even after the guy got booted by me and a separate group, FailureMaster still maintained contact. Multiple women tell you someone's bad and you just shrug it off because, you're "not treated that way". Okay, buddy. I'm no expert, but turning a blind eye to obvious verbal/emotional abuse against women sure points to misogyny. That's clearly just conjecture, though. There's no hard evidence he's a misogynist, but it's just really sketchy when you decide to maintain contact with two people who abuse women, one potentially having multiple accounts. And also if someone abuses another person, I think it's common sense not to stay in contact with the abuser? While you could choose to not "take a side" (actual thing I recall him saying), it is taking a side. It's still a decision that shows support for the abuser.

FailureMaster would get really... weird if someone understood something he felt he should have better knowledge of. I remember very clearly when Divine Blade for Grand Master was introduced. He wrote it off as a shit tier skill pretty quickly. I was confused about why, explained how to get maximum damage, and he just went off the rails (not exactly in an angry way, but you could feel the frustration) because he'd been a GrM main for years and I only dabbled for fun and me time. This was very consistent behavior for him. If someone had a better understanding of one of his interests than he did, he'd get so mad but disguise it under a pity party, and we'd have to soothe him.

Through the years due to very consistent behavior from him, I felt like I was walking on eggshells. There were so many unspoken rules to follow: don't try to be more knowledgeable, don't go near topics he's sensitive about, don't refuse to talk about something he wants to discuss, don't do this, don't do that. So every time he asked to talk to me about something I didn't even want to discuss, especially if it was a personal issue I'd been having, I'd allow it since he would regularly throw himself a pity party if I didn't. Again, I've had shit friendships throughout my life, this was overall healthier in comparison in my mind. But like... this type of thing doesn't allow you to have hard boundaries. When I did try to establish boundaries, he'd get upset. The last time I got really angry about it and enforced my boundaries, I tried to talk it through once I had cooled down since I wanted to reach common ground. He ultimately ended the friendship because it was too hard and he had nothing else to say. I wish I still had the receipts, but that was more or less his reason from what I can recall.

Through my partner, I learned that FailureMaster discussed things with others that I had spoken about to him in confidence. I don't believe my partner is lying, especially as I remember seeing a text between two people from the friend group they were all a part of that confirmed it. You don't go behind someone's back and air out their dirty laundry. How many times has he betrayed my confidence over the years we were friends? I spoke to him about a lot of personal issues, how many people know all these details about me and my life? I know none of these people he's spoken to about me. It doesn't make it any better or worse, but it's just so fucked up.

Speaking of my partner, FailureMaster had some really weird jealousy and regret when we got together. He's the one who introduced us. Granted, it wasn't a matchmaking thing, we just ended up getting along fairly well. We didn't even make our relationship a focal point, at least I don't believe we did, I can't recall any instance where we clearly treated the other differently than regular friends during activities we'd all do together. I remember FailureMaster going on a whole rant about how he shouldn't have mixed two different friend groups. We had some of the same interests so, to me, it did end up simplifying things to do certain stuff together. He also said something about being afraid me or my partner would push him aside. Like... what? People in relationships can't have friends or something? We didn't just stop talking to him or lessen contact with him either and we still spoke with him separately. Like, sir, you're an adult, please don't act like a child being pushed aside when a single parent finds a new partner that they cater to. This was not that type of situation.

Whenever he could, he would find a way to play the victim. I think it was a bit of a mindset he was stuck in stemming from childhood and strengthened by his family constantly enabling his worst tendencies. But, again, he's an adult. It's his responsibility to deal with that and figure out how to have a healthier mindset. He told me he started going to counseling a few years before our friendship blew up, but doesn't really seem like it did much if he actually went.

While I still feel mad when I think of this as a lot of it is such a breach of trust, I do miss our friendship. We were friends for six years and I had hoped we could maintain that friendship for longer. Like I miss the person I thought he was and the friendship I thought we had. I miss the person who I could nerd out about things I really enjoyed with and they'd do the same. I miss the person I could share my fanfic ideas with. I miss the person I could just talk to about anything and everything. There's been so many things I've wanted to talk to him about over the years, but I can't and I shouldn't even if I had the opportunity.

And he knows about this account as he was one of the people I wrote my original Yama Raja guide for. So on the very small chance he actually decides to use tumblr and check this account, if he sees this and gets mad, he can just... deal with it? He spoke about my real problems with my actual real life name to his friends. I think after 5 years I'm free to talk to the void about him using a pseudonym where he can't be identified by anyone except someone intimately involved in the matter.

[anonraja]

Love how not even heals stack anymore in the test server.

So what are people supposed to do now to progress? Can't join as a healer since their buffs don't stack anymore so it's redundant to take more than one. Can't join as a DPS since you're not accepted unless you can DPS. I guess "synergy DPS" is the way to go now? But wait can't really do that either since they're expected to be able to justify their spot by having damage.

This proposed balance is a joke honestly.

[anonraja]

I think it's partially in response to the meta in KR being 1 healer + rest DPS and partially to make parties not be made up of 5 healers + 1 DPS during events like the Senpai one.

Is it still an unfriendly change? Yes. What's going to be the suggestion for progression going forward when healers are going to be limited to 1 per party and people are liable to take the highest CP healer that applies since the HP part of healing is tied to CP? It's likely you're still not going to be taken as a DPS if you don't have the equipment to DPS as it's always been. I don't even think trying to progress as someone like Aps is viable anymore since a lot of sub-DPS like her got absolutely gutted in terms of party support and didn't get much, if any, damage balancing to be able to justify their spot in a party.

So how are people supposed to progress easily unless they just solo? But not every class is smooth sailing for solo play and not every dungeon is able to be soloed comfortably anyway. For reference, I'm still getting rejected regularly from Spirit Lord's Temple parties as a DPS since I'm still missing Maestro Halo + I guess the Atma'ram Accessory Set and my CP doesn't already hit some arbitrary limit. Spirit Lord's Temple isn't a dungeon that's comfortable to solo due to how much of a damage sponge it is and there's somehow still nothing really out there to tell you about mechs if you take awhile to whittle down the HP.

[anonraja]

Love how not even heals stack anymore in the test server.

So what are people supposed to do now to progress? Can't join as a healer since their buffs don't stack anymore so it's redundant to take more than one. Can't join as a DPS since you're not accepted unless you can DPS. I guess "synergy DPS" is the way to go now? But wait can't really do that either since they're expected to be able to justify their spot by having damage.

This proposed balance is a joke honestly.