General

I don't like the changes. They're overly complicated.
Idk if it's a buff or a nerf, but it's annoying.

I would kill for just some regular treatment.
I do not like how reliant our DPS is on precise control (which requires a flawless connection).

And making our attacks dark element is pointless.
Nothing in the game is weak or resist to dark that isn't resistant to neutral anyway. It's just a change to make our playstyle more complicated (though they'll call it complex or dynamic).

(and for those of you that don't get it: there are 7 elements in maple, and every monster has an integer attribute for that element: Neutral, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison, Holy, Dark. iirc, 0 correlates to no resistance. 1 correlates to weak. 2 correlates to strong. and 3 correlates to immune.) Our attacks in the past were just neutral element. There is no "physical" resistance in this game. That's such a strange misunderstanding-- that is, in terms of elements. There's obviously PDR/MDR, but that's not what's being discussed here.

@tho867: oooo daaaamn, also death cooldown is 5 sec so itd take 10 attacks to reduce it completely
by the way it sounds we exchange 40secs of 2 extra attacks for 30secs of 10+ extra attacks pretty sick <3
about the aran thing doubt thatd happen to bams and nws (both getting dark this patch)

@tho867: actually excited about it now thanks

Update to Master of Death: duration has been decreased from 40 seconds to 30 seconds, cooldown has been increased from 120 seconds to 200 seconds, number of monsters required to activate Death has been decreased from 3 to 1, all Blow skills’ number of hits boost has been decreased from 2 to 1, in addition to existing effects Master of Death now reduces Death’s reactivation cooldown by 0.5 seconds each time a Dark element attack (other than Death) hits an enemy.

So basically with a 6 second cooldown, once we've attacked 12 times within the time frame, we have a god mode with the remaining time to proc Death with a single atk, holy moly.....

On a side note, what really confuses me is will our attacks be straight up dark element, or will we have both dark and physical element. I've been playing Aran for a side project and what i've noticed at hilla is that aran is a physical type unbuffed but becomes physical and ice type with snow charge active. Thus my aran would do 1/4 the damage to hilla with snowcharge in comparison to a neutral monster like zakum.

Not as bad as the last nerf. The only downside of this is seeing battle master as being nerf and everything is changing as a dark element, so not that much of a nerf with that being said.

To clarify about elemental damage in Maplestory: There are 7 elements, Ice, Lightning, Fire, Poision, Holy, Dark and Physical. The 'Physical' elemental should probably be called 'Neutral', since that's exactly what it is, but whatever. Yes, there is also 'magic damage' and 'physical damage', but that's something else (classes that use MATK do magic damage with their skills, classes that use WATK do physical damage, so Battle Mages right now do magic damage with the physical element).

Anyways, monsters can either be neutral, weak, strong or immune to an element. Neutral doesn't do anything, weak means the monster takes 50% more damage from that element (x1.5), strong halves your damage (0.5) and immune monsters take only 1 damage. 'Elemental resistance ignore', from the Insight trait or elemental reset skills allows a portion, if not all, of your damage to ignore the monsters resistances and weakness, so right now mages can simply use their elemental reset skills ('Elemental Decrease' for explorer mages) and do normal damage on absolutely anything, including bosses that are strong against everything. That will get nerfed in the future, of course.

Most bosses nowadays are strong against everything - including Physical - so your damage is basically halfed against those bosses no matter what element you use. The notable exceptions are:

Von Leon, Zakum, Ranmaru, Horntail and Shinsoo, which are neutral to everything, and normal Pink Bean, who is strong versus everything except poison. Because reasons. Anyways, if someone wants a complete list, here you go: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/MapleStory/Complete_monster_list

TL;DR: The Dark element makes absolutely no difference at bossing, it might hurt training at very specific maps, but other than that, nothing changed.

And I have no idea how the 'Physical' element interacts with E. Staffs. AFAIK, it affects Holy, so it should affect Dark, I'm fairly sure of that.

i really dont get why your saying this is a nerf.
pretty much all our skills are changing to dark element which dosent really affect us in any way.
our damage is already cut in half at end game bosses, havign a dark element does nothing.
as for mobs... well theres not much dark resistant mobs out there. (only one coming to mind is that brown fluffy monster in orbis tower)

and im actually liking the new battle master, we dont have the numbers yet for the duration and CD but im guessing its gonna be around 30 sec duration with 200 secs CD. the reaper atm is 5 seconds CD, with the new effect of battle master, reaper is gonna appear every seconds near the end of the buff duration.
if you ask me, its a huge DPS boost for bosses

hmmmmmm, now that you mention e-staves, i think the dark element will reduce your damage now O_O
i think it was boost to the corresponding element, and loss for every other element... so before it had no element so it was unaffected but now it does so it will probably lose damage??

we already had an element, for some reason every single job has an element so everyone is affected by a boss's elemental resistance unless the job has a way to ignore it, making our element dark wont change anything
for death master unless cooldown is like 200secs i think its nice, while it lasts there gonna be some insane burst so exchanging some secs and 1 FB line for it wont hurt
i dont even use current battle master often, it doesnt make a big impact like death master would

@ak44: Bosses have both % defense and damage reduction and elemental resistances, the max is 50% resistance (with the exception of arkarium's snakes which havent been patched by NexonNA yet) meaning it will reduces your damage by half after PDR calculations.

@star909: I thought those physical and magic was affected by weapon defense and magic defense, and % damage reduction

"reduces Death's reactivation cooldown each time a Dark element attack hits an enemy"
so basically death's cooldown will keep decreasing within the time Battle Master is active o-o. It is still a nerf I guess but it will be a huge amount of burst damage towards the end?
Only question now is what bosses are strong/weak to dark elements (Night Walkers also receive dark element this patch)

You're already affected by elemental resistances, you're attacks count as, Physical? Magic? Either way they're already affected. And I dont remember any elemental staves affecting any "dark" elements and Fafnir is still better either way.

But yes this is an overall nerf. (I guess if you cast dark genesis more it's more dps?)