Vindictus : Fiona Developer’s Note and holding skill cooldownsÂ
(AFKalmighty: please excuse the quality of this translation. I was in a hurry and there was a lot of text to work on.)
-General Direction
The biggest problem with Fiona’s gameplay was that her attack flow is interfered with too easily.
Both Amaranth Kick and Stigma Hammer packs a powerful punch but the combat situation usually changes before taking the final action which forces the Fiona to cancel her attack to guard an attack or pursue her enemy.
This is especially so for Long Hammer which needs a high enhanced weapon for high attack speed in order to avoid experiencing too much difficulty in attacking or having her attack combo interfered.
As new updates introduced quicker monsters, Fiona’s playstyle became centered around Counter Attack. This lead to stale gameplay with little room for skill differences.
This is why we’ve decided to set the general direction for Fiona’s change to be centered around improving her attack flow and increasing the skill gap. To achieve this we increased Fiona’s mobility, added a new skill for maintaining her attack flow, and fixed some of her existing skills.
-Mobility Improvements
1.Shield Dash
Fiona’s Shield Dash is used for quick movement but had a long cooldown. Situations where Fiona needed to pursue an enemy that got away during her attack happened often but Shield Dash was limited in its use. So we improved Shield Dash so that its cooldown is 7 seconds at its highest rank and it can also be used by holding on to your kick button.
The SP cost for using Shield Dash like this is 25 so you can use it 10 times with one bar of SP. Also, it does not share cooldown with Shield Dash used through your quickslot.
2. Guard reaction time
The time you can cancel your attack by using Guard has been pulled forward for several skills, especially for Hammer attacks. This will allow players with low attack speed to be able to actively react against enemy attacks quicker.
3.Skill reaction time
Most of Fiona’s active skills could only be used after her actions have completely ended. Now she will be able to use her active skills quicker. For example, Fiona will now be able to use Shield Bash or Shield Charge right after her left feet hits the floor after using Amaranth Kick.
4. Hammer speed increase
Attack speed for normal attacks, LR, and LLR has been increased. It will be hard to tell the difference with the attack speed change alone but the change will become apparent when used with the quicker Guard timing.
-New Skills
1.Shield Parry
As a shield bearer, Fiona is a character with slow attack speed. But this leads to her giving up on smashes and pulling up guard mid-attack too often.
Shield Parry is a skill that allows her to continue her attack in those kind of situations. Shield Parry can be used during normal attack and smashes (except for Stigma Hammer). The new skill differs from Guard in the fact that it can be used any time during an attack. The command for Shield Parry is Tab but can be changed in options.
[watch the video for a demonstration]
As shown in the video, you can press your Tab key to parry an attack and go back to the attack you were executing before.
But the catch is that the time frame for Shield Parry isn’t long and requires timing like perfect Guard.
You will receive damage if Shield Parry isn’t used at proper timing and even if you aren’t attacked, you won’t be able to continue your next action smoothly.
After a successful use of Shield Parry, you can’t use Shield Parry again for the same attack during that attack phase. This is for balancing reasons. For example, if you use Shield Parry during an Amaranth Kick then use Amaranth Kick after that you can’t use Shield Parry during the second Amaranth Kick.
@Butterfly Swing is separated between its initial smash and its continuous smash.Â
[AFKalmighty:I’m not sure if they mean the distinction between initial smash and continuous smash or they mean that you can use Shield Parry as much as you want during any type of Butterfly Swing.]
Also, your next smash attack is enhanced after a successful Shield Parry for 10 seconds. So even if your opponent distances itself from you after a Shield Parry you still have 10 seconds to catch up and put in a smash.
There will be situations where it is more efficient to use Counter Attack since Shield Parry is designed to be most efficient during an attack that’s coming in at a timing when Guard isn’t possible or during a powerful attack such as Amaranth Kick or Butterfly Swing.
You can expect to see some fluid gameplay between the use of Shield Parry and Perfect Guard attack.
@Perfect Guard attack can now be used with Large Shields as well.
2.Active : Damage Reduction
Damage Reduction is a Large Shield exclusive skill. In exchange for greatly damaging your shield’s combat durability, the damage you receive while the skill is in effect will be reduced up to 75%.
You will also gain super-armor status during the effect and Hammer can use its secondary Slashing High Butterfly Swing during Damage Reduction.
Although the cooldown for Damage Reduction is quite long, it can be reduced with Perfect Gaurd. This will allow more room for player skill to have effect on gameplay.
We hope that this skill will act as a supportive skill for beginner Fionas and a tactical attack skill for skilled Fionas.
-Skill changes
1. Stun rate increase
The stun rate for Fiona’s R has been increased to the point that a Fiona can stop Bark1’s movement by using Shield Bash followed with R.
2.Petal Toss enhanced attack
When Petal Toss reaches a certain rank, it will add an additional attack after Focal Point. This extra attack will have greatly increases range and will be further explained along with Focal Point.
3.Ivy Sweep improvement
Ivy Sweep’s final attack will have increased attack range and SP gain. The problem with handling crowds of monsters with Ivy Sweep’s small range has been addressed and is intended to be Sword Fiona’s quickest way to stack SP.
4.Smash Mastery effecting Active Skills
Shield Bash, Shield Charge, and Focal Point will now be included in Smash Mastery’s effect. We apologize for taking this long to address this issue.
5.Focal Point
Not only has Focal Point’s damage been increased with it being added to Smash Mastery but it can now crit as well. So now it is worth its SP cost by dealing damage close to Amaranth Kick at a wide radius.
The SP cost reduction for using it after Shield Dash has also been greatly increased.
It’s use has also been changed for Sword. When a Sword Fiona reaches a certain rank with Petal Toss, she can do an additional attack with which she can chain another Focal Point afterwards at decreased SP cost.
This means she can repeatedly chain Focal Point -> Petal Toss enhanced attack. But this combo can only be repeated at certain situations because the Petal Toss enhanced attack requires 100 stamina to use and not to mention that Petal Toss still costs SP.
This change was intended to address the issue where Sword Fiona’s only had Amaranth Kick to use during Slashing High. Now she can use Focal Point -> Petal Toss enhanced attack combo during Slashing High as long as her SP reserve permits it.
@Shield Parry can be used during Petal Toss enhanced attack
We also hope to see Focal Point after Shield Dash combo more often with both Sword and Hammer.
6. Butterfly Swing-Slashing High attack
The second attack and Stigma Smash after Butterfly Swing’s secondary smash attack with Slashing High can be used even if Slashing High expires during the combo.
7. Counter Attack
There were moments where a Fiona will be attacked during the short time between a Guard and Counter Attack and have her Counter Attack canceled. That will be no more since Fiona will have super-armor status while using Counter Attack.
8.Shield Changes
In the current situation Shields never break and thus removes the need for Shield Repair. So we made the following changes to address this situation.
First one is Large Shields are now destructible in combat again.
Though in reality, Large Shields are still neigh indestructible because of their high durability. But continuous use of the new skill, Damage Reduction, will bring a new need for managing Large Shield combat durability. Perfect Guard will also play a big role in how quickly a Large Shield’s durability is spent.
Second Change is that Shield Enhance will now greatly decrease a Small Shield’s durability when used. Typically the third use of Shield Enhance will break a Small Shield. Though players will notice the disadvantage from this changes at first, we would like to stress the fact that the use of Perfect Guard will influence the frequency of Shield Enhance use and that we intend to make player skill take a huge role in how fast their shield’s combat durability is depleted.
The third change is with Shield Repair. Shield Repair has been improved with the increased risk of shields breaking. First, the SP cost has been reduced to 250[1bar] from 500[2bar]. Second is an 800 increase to defense for 1 minute.
So Shield Repair should no longer be a waste of SP.
9.Shield Charge SP cost reduction.
Shield Charge now costs 750[3bars]SP instead of 1000[4bars]SP. We found Shield Charge to be lacking compared to other 4bar SP skills and Fiona will receive a new 4bar SP skill that is not mentioned in this Developer’s Note.
10.Taunt improvement
Taunt’s SP cost has been reduced to 500 along with visual pointers to indicate that Fiona used Taunt. A system message will be displayed when a Fiona uses Taunt along with an effect that will show regardless of whether other player’s effects are enabled or not.
The last thing to be mentioned on this Developer’s Note is that the cooldown for all boss holding skills [such as Tempest] have been changed.
We wanted to create a combat environment with more precise movement and evasion based on movement instead of invulnerability frames with the release of Paradise of Oblivion. But there is something that is interfering with our goal.Â
That is the use of holding skills.
Depending on the party roster, there can be up to 8 characters using holding skills every 2 to 3 minutes which leads to creating sandbags out of bosses. This will get worse when Lann, Fiona, Evie, and Karok gets their new holding skills.
This is why we’ve decided to increase the cooldown of holding skills to 20 minutes. This will create the need to use holding skills tactically. We are also at work to continuously improve active skills so that they all stay useful. Just as how Fiona’s active skills have been improved and her SP usage diversified.Â