Friday, September 4 Design Notes: Fleshweaver Part 1 (Part 1)


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9/4/2026 17:21:11

Laeon val Observis
Member

quote:

Friday, September 4, 2026
Fleshweaver Part 1 (Part 1)
Hey there, heroes!

This week's release is coming in two parts: Bugfixes and balance changes today, and the first half of Fleshweaver training tomorrow!

And of course, we have a sneak peek of the upcoming... menu.

We also have September's seasonal specials returning, with a new addition!

The Earthvessel Stalker cosmetic helm is available from the returning Earthvessel shop for 300 Dragon Coins! Don't forget to check out he other returning seasonal items, too!

Now, on to the fixes and balance changes!

For Fleshweaver, we heard the feedback about frustrations with fights where Protosouls were not readily available. However, due to how strong the empowerments are, rather than increase the availability and frequency of Protosouls, we wanted to make the unempowered versions of the skills less lackluster.

Along this line, to assist with reducing dependence on Flesh of Fire in shorter battles, base damage of a number of skills have been adjusted.

Fleshweaver's survivability also somewhat exceeded expectations in certain situations, so there have been some adjustments to some of that aspect, specifically Slough Skin and Soul's Edge.
Soul's Edge:
Penalties for using HP cost skills without enough HP have been increased to stacking -10 All, -20 Avd/Def for 4 turns, up from stacking -10 All, -10 Avd/Def for 3 turns.
% based HP heals and MP generation have been changed to flat costs based on level:
Base MP regeneration on skill use changed to Level/2 MP from 5% max MP.

Attack button: Changed to Level HP from 2% max HP.

Flesh of Nature: HoT effect changed to Level * 2 HP from 5% max HP.

Flesh of Water: Heal changed to Level *1.5 HP from 4% max HP. Empowered: Heal changed to Level * 2.5 HP from 7% max HP.
Attack:
Heal changed to Level HP from 2% max HP.

Damage reduced to 1x150% from 1x200%
Hecatoncheires:
Damage increased to 6x30% (180%) from 6x25% (150%)

Empowered: Cooldown reduced from 13 to 12, buff duration increased from 7 to 8, debuff duration increased form 6 to 7.
Slough Skin:
Damage reduced to 2x50% (100%) from 2x75% (150%)

Cooldown increased to 8 from 6.

Empowered: Cooldown increased to 11 from 9.
Erupt Horror:
Cooldown increased to 8 from 7 (Empowered cooldown unchanged)
Flesh of Light:
MP cost reduced to 100 from 150.

Damage increased to 1x200% from 1x150%.
Flesh of Nature:
Cooldown reduced to 9 from 11 (Empowered cooldown unchanged)

HoT changed to Level * 2 HP from 5% max HP.

-Health buff and +Health debuff now always apply at full strength on any hit, instead of stacking per hit.
Flesh of Darkness:
MP cost reduced to 100 from 150.

Cooldown reduced to 6 from 7 (Empowered cooldown unchanged)

Base damage increased to 1x200% from 1x150%.
Flesh of Water:
Cooldown reduced to 7 from 8 (Empowered cooldown unchanged)

Heal per hit changed to Level * 1.5 HP from 4% max HP.

Empowered: Heal per hit changed to Level * 2.5 HP from 7% max HP.
Flesh of Energy:
MP cost reduced to 200 from 250.

Cooldown reduced to 0 from 1 (Empowered cooldown unchanged)

Damage increased to 2x150% (300%) from 2x125% (250%)
Flesh of Fire:
Empowered: Cooldown reduced to 3 from 4
Dual Immolation:
No longer generates MP, since it does not spend any HP.
Also, some bugfixes for Fleshweaver!
Dual Immolation now properly consumes a Protosoul when empowered.

Taking lethal damage now sets your MP to 0.

Nailburst tooltip now properly changes when selecting targets.

Fixed an issue where the player would still try to walk up to targets at specific minimum distances.
Some general bugfixes and updates!
Fixed some broken graphics on Alloyed KabutoArc.

Fixed an issue where certain Book 2 guests had skills improperly locked behind a late Book 3 quest.

Fixed an issue where certain bank checks such as Armor Closet and Customization Room did not properly check the bank.

Fixed an issue where Darkon's The Harvest effect could be overwritten by Fleshweaver's Flesh of Nature effect.

Anything else I may have forgotten!
And that's all for today! Tomorrow, hopefully, we'll be able to get you started on your Fleshweaving journey! ...Or not!

AQW

Post #: 1

9/4/2026 18:37:26

TFS
Helpful!

quote:

Soul's Edge:
Penalties for using HP cost skills without enough HP have been increased to stacking -10 All, -20 Avd/Def for 4 turns, up from stacking -10 All, -10 Avd/Def for 3 turns.

I dislike this change. Don't get me wrong, Soul's Edge is something you were not really going to activate in the first place if you were using the class correctly, but I dislike how the approach to nerfing this was just to introduce an element of hit roll RNG that wasn't an issue before - stacking -20 when you have +200 and bosses average at 43 just introduces an unnecessary element of frustration.
I'm also not sure that low HP camping was something that was even super viable in the first place, and the duration increase to 4 turns to ensure that you'll still have at least 1 unshielded turn to get smacked is already a pretty substantial downside to attempting it.

quote:

Base MP regeneration on skill use changed to Level/2 MP from 5% max MP.

My initial reaction is that I dislike this because it's a nerf to full WIS, which is a fun and unique build. I think what this functionally does is increase reliance on eFire (and therefore increase protosoul consumption) if your intent is to generate more MP.

quote:

Erupt Horror:
Cooldown increased to 8 from 7 (Empowered cooldown unchanged)

I'm not sure what the point of this one is? It's an extremely minor change that doesn't really affect too much, but it's also something that didn't really need to be changed and all this does is potentially disturb the class's already-great flow state.

quote:

Flesh of Light:
MP cost reduced to 100 from 150.
Damage increased to 1x200% from 1x150%.

I think this is a good change, as Horror's +crit no longer feels 'wasted' (as the class's other high damage moves were already autocrit). However, it doesn't actually reduce protosoul consumption because you were never empowering this in the first place.

quote:

Flesh of Darkness:
MP cost reduced to 100 from 150.
Cooldown reduced to 6 from 7 (Empowered cooldown unchanged)
Base damage increased to 1x200% from 1x150%.

See above, though you would occasionally empower this.

quote:

Flesh of Nature:

-Health buff and +Health debuff now always apply at full strength on any hit, instead of stacking per hit.

I understand that this strictly makes the class better, but I kind of dislike it. I thought it was fun and unique that Fleshweaver had to be 'aggressive' and use either +Bonus or Cage in order to heal. While that design element is still on Water, taking it off of Nature reduces it.

quote:

Flesh of Water:

Cooldown reduced to 7 from 8 (Empowered cooldown unchanged)
Heal per hit changed to Level * 1.5 HP from 4% max HP.
Empowered: Heal per hit changed to Level * 2.5 HP from 7% max HP.

This does not address the problem at all and you are still never going to use unempowered Water.

quote:

Flesh of Fire:
Empowered: Cooldown reduced to 3 from 4

This is also something that strictly improves the class, but as with Nature I think making it less tricky to use also makes the class less fun. Because this is now a much more appealing option - in addition to being more 'needed' in order to generate MP - it's also more reliant on protosoul consumption than it was before. There is also no longer much of a cost-benefit analysis in picking empowered versus unempowered Fire, as the empowered version is now just straight-up better in most contexts.

Overall I dislike these changes. These changes sought to improve the protosoul economy by increasing the effectiveness of unempowered skills, but they accomplished the exact opposite. They only increased the effectiveness of skills you weren't going to empower anyway, and substantially increased both the effectiveness of eFire and the class's reliance on it, mandating more protosoul consumption than it did before (while eImmolation's consumption was a bug, that's also something that substantially tightens the protosoul economy). Some of the buffs that the class received made it less tactical and fun to use, while some of the nerfs introduced elements of frustration that weren't there before.

also the level-based heals are very slight buffs but they introduce a bunch of nonstandard numbers and that's yucky

Post #: 2

9/4/2026 19:44:16

Aura Knight
Member

This is shaping up to be my current favorite class.

AQW

Post #: 3

9/5/2026 4:37:03

Bluu
Member

All of these changes are very good and welcome additions! The change to unempowered Energy is absolutely very welcome and quite handy too, considering your tendency to overcap MP at times when pFire is active. The base skills being better overall is a good change as well, as it now does not necessitate the use of Protosouls to make those skills worth using at all - they just fit into your standard gameplay loop a lot better. The class is definitely more... fleshed out now.

quote:

Flesh of Fire:
- Empowered: Cooldown reduced to 3 from 4

This is, however, a terrible change. The class shouldn't be made easier to play because people are unwilling to learn how to optimize it. The original Empowered Flesh of Fire was a high-risk high-reward button that paid off really well if you used it carefully and planned well-ahead. The new version takes away the complexity and allows you to get away with hitting the nuke early. Players who struggled to manage their health under pFire or did not wish to play so tightly could just... not empower the skill.

Another concern of this is that Fleshweaver can actually speedrun fights (thereby ignoring mechanics) faster by 1-2 turns per fight and with much more safety now. As the changes to the class' native healing skills make them heal a flat value of HP (affected by Health Res) as opposed to a percentage of your total HP, it is now even more viable to run an even more unorthodox INT/WIS build with just enough END to allow you to safely fire off a pImmolation whenever it's convenient to do so. This allows you to have both: a high damage output and a large total mana barrier, exacerbated by how easily the mana barrier fills up under pImmolation and how little damage (sometimes 0) damage you will be taking to your actual HP bar in most fights.

I remember that the developer once complained about spending lots of time coming up with cool, unique boss mechanics, only for the players to be like "what mechanics" because Doomknight killed Odessa in 6 turns. This is actively detrimental to the developer's design intent. Don't get me wrong, I love watching or doing quick clears with big nukes and optimal play, but there's a limit beyond which something is just ridiculously busted and therefore boring - which is the case with CDE and DBE fwiw, but that's a separate issue.

Now, onto the important bit: why I think the above post by @TFS is dishonest.

quote:

Don't get me wrong, Soul's Edge is something you were not really going to activate in the first place if you were using the class correctly, but I dislike how the approach to nerfing this was just to introduce an element of hit roll RNG that wasn't an issue before - stacking -20 when you have +200 and bosses average at 43 just introduces an unnecessary element of frustration.

Soul's Edge was something you could intentionally abuse against bosses that couldn't effectively deplete your mana barrier by staying at 1 HP and clicking the HP cost skills. The only real downside to this was that it would get rid of Overwhelming Hunger if that was active on you, but nothing was stopping you from just staying at 1 HP after hitting Dual Immolation and stalling for several turns, unless the boss could deal enough damage to kill you, at which point you would use eAegis to shield the 3 turns of the stacked debuff.

You have +200 MPM from Ice + 111 MPM from BiS gear, which equals 311 MPM. 43 Bonus cannot hit over 194 MPM, meaning that you can build up to six stacks of the current Soul's Edge with relative safety and then use eIce on turns where the average 43 Bonus enemy does not gain Bonus buffs to get rid of 3/4ths of the penalty. This isn't even to mention eLight, which is a -80 Bonus and Crit debuff for four turns, giving you an effective 391 MPM, meaning that you can now stack up to 10 stacks of Soul's Edge if you really wanted to abuse this feature. It will never work out this cleanly in practice, but the fact that this is the theoretical maximum goes to show that this is a genuinely non-existent penalty for playing poorly.

quote:

I'm also not sure that low HP camping was something that was even super viable in the first place, and the duration increase to 4 turns to ensure that you'll still have at least 1 unshielded turn to get smacked is already a pretty substantial downside to attempting it.

The guy that beat SSEX in 30 turns with Fleshweaver (record number of turns btw) stayed at 1 HP for 10 turns and stacked up to -70 All/MPM/BPD to skip past Darkon's first and second phases.

quote:

My initial reaction is that I dislike this because it's a nerf to full WIS, which is a fun and unique build.

The full WIS build still has 1900 MP's worth of a Mana Barrier to build up. You just gain 40 less MP per skill with that build, which is offset by clicking Darkness to reduce the enemy's damage. This does not increase dependence on Flesh of Fire in shorter battles because Erupt Horror already gives you 400 MP to work with on the first turn, and Flesh of Fire is literally the class' bread-and-butter in longer battles.

quote:

I'm not sure what the point of this one is? It's an extremely minor change that doesn't really affect too much, but it's also something that didn't really need to be changed and all this does is potentially disturb the class's already-great flow state.

It is a 400% nuke that gives you +100 Bonus and +200 Crit for three turns, including the turn you use it. Additionally, it generates 400 MP, which is more than half a protosoul. It already does a lot more than the average class autocrit whilst having a very short cooldown even after the nerf.

quote:

I understand that this strictly makes the class better, but I kind of dislike it. I thought it was fun and unique that Fleshweaver had to be 'aggressive' and use either +Bonus or Cage in order to heal. While that design element is still on Water, taking it off of Nature reduces it.

This makes 0 practical difference whilst only serving to bloat tooltip text. At worst, you would Bonus stack, use Dragon Scout, or time Flesh of Nature such that it's used shortly after Erupt Horror (Erupt -> pImmolation -> pNature works for instance) so that all your hits connect, and just reset the fight if they don't connect.

quote:

This is also something that strictly improves the class, but as with Nature I think making it less tricky to use also makes the class less fun.

I agree with you, but aren't you the guy that said that Jaania EX requires tricky play during the fourth phase to avoid going below her execution threshold? You can just fire off a pImmolation from <33% HP the turn after she uses the 25% nuke and kill her. So I'm not exactly sure what "tricky" strategies you were using before.

These changes are great, but the pFire change should be reverted to maintain the complexity of the class' original design and prevent it from being too strong and fast.

< Message edited by Bluu -- 9/5/2026 8:15:40 >

Post #: 4

9/5/2026 8:52:36

GodJank
Member

It's funny that instead of giving Energy one more duration (so you could do Energy > Dual Immolation), Verly just decided to make it even more spammable and increase the base damage, giving the class a spammable 300% autocrit with 50% crit damage.

Some of these buffs are good but I think the heals end up feeling a bit too weak anyways to justify using them most of the time. Changing the heal to Level * 1.5 from 4% max HP is not a significant buff; level * 1.5 is 135 and 4% max HP heal is going to range from 120 to 128. It's not a very significant buff in the grand scheme of things. The buffs help but I'll have to try out the class a bit more in fights to see how it feels long term.

Unrelated, but the new Consumed set is cool!

Post #: 5

9/5/2026 13:51:55

TFS
Helpful!

quote:

Soul's Edge was something you could intentionally abuse against bosses that couldn't effectively deplete your mana barrier by staying at 1 HP and clicking the HP cost skills. The only real downside to this was that it would get rid of Overwhelming Hunger if that was active on you, but nothing was stopping you from just staying at 1 HP after hitting Dual Immolation and stalling for several turns, unless the boss could deal enough damage to kill you, at which point you would use eAegis to shield the 3 turns of the stacked debuff.

...If a boss can't deal 200 DPT through -30 or more All that's a boss or matchup issue, accomplished by either already finishing the 'hard' part of the fight and taking out one of multiple enemies, or just fighting an easier boss. And this isn't something that's been changed by this nerf.

quote:

The guy that beat SSEX in 30 turns with Fleshweaver (record number of turns btw) stayed at 1 HP for 10 turns and stacked up to -70 All/MPM/BPD to skip past Darkon's first and second phases.

Yeah, and again, this nerf doesn't change that at all per the values you so graciously mapped out above.

Introducing hit roll RNG through small MPM debuffs is a terrible way to nerf this sort of thing since the design intent here is just to add inconsistency or slight annoyance. If the purported balance issue was stalling out Soul Edge stacks through Aegis, surely a nerf that just prevents shielding after X turns (compounding debuff?) would make more sense than just introducing RNG.

quote:

This does not increase dependence on Flesh of Fire in shorter battles because Erupt Horror already gives you 400 MP to work with on the first turn, and Flesh of Fire is literally the class' bread-and-butter in longer battles.

...You want to blow Horror on turn 1 instead of setting it up with damage boosting effects? Instead of Fire, which sets up your damage boosting effects (eEnergy) for Horror? Because you want to save Fire - which converts a lot of HP to a lot of MP - for later in longer fights, when you already have reduced HP and built-up MP? ...Is this like your "Ice and eIce are useless on this class" thing from the last thread?

quote:

It is a 400% nuke that gives you +100 Bonus and +200 Crit for three turns, including the turn you use it. Additionally, it generates 400 MP, which is more than half a protosoul. It already does a lot more than the average class autocrit whilst having a very short cooldown even after the nerf.

...doesn't address the post at all? It should have a one turn longer cooldown because [pointless comparison to unspecified "other classes"]? What?

quote:

This makes 0 practical difference whilst only serving to bloat tooltip text. At worst, you would Bonus stack, use Dragon Scout, or time Flesh of Nature such that it's used shortly after Erupt Horror (Erupt -> pImmolation -> pNature works for instance) so that all your hits connect, and just reset the fight if they don't connect.

Yes, previously you would set up your healing with an offensive effect. Thank you for reiterating my statement.

quote:

I agree with you, but aren't you the guy that said that Jaania EX requires tricky play during the fourth phase to avoid going below her execution threshold? You can just fire off a pImmolation from <33% HP the turn after she uses the 25% nuke and kill her. So I'm not exactly sure what "tricky" strategies you were using before.

Well, the best use case would be generating enough MP to tank through INT stack after a recovery phase in longer fights - good example would be Alteon in DLL. Maybe you'd be able to get more of an idea vs harder fights. I'm not sure what nuking Jaania has to do with eFire?

You wrote a huge textwall saying my post was "dishonest" but didn't have a single thing to say about any of its central claims (namely how protosoul management was made worse by changes that attempted to improve it), and instead just quibbled over random exemplary statements without elaboration.

< Message edited by TFS -- 9/5/2026 13:53:32 >

Post #: 6

9/5/2026 14:40:36

Bluu
Member

quote:

...If a boss can't deal 200 DPT through -30 or more All that's a boss or matchup issue, accomplished by either already finishing the 'hard' part of the fight and taking out one of multiple enemies, or just fighting an easier boss. And this isn't something that's been changed by this nerf.

Dishonest. You aren't starting from 0 MP when you're abusing Soul's Edge, you've already fired off an Immolation.

quote:

Yeah, and again, this nerf doesn't change that at all per the values you so graciously mapped out above.

Dishonest. Darkon is not a 43 Bonus boss, he gains +Bonus in his first phase. The values just prove that the debuff isn't strong enough even in the current state.

quote:

Introducing hit roll RNG

Dishonest. There is no RNG if you have 151 more MPM than the enemy's Bonus. You would know this if you played the game.

quote:

...You want to blow Horror on turn 1 instead of setting it up with damage boosting effects?

Sure, if the damage from Horror isn't needed to kill the boss with your Immolation nuke and you'd rather have a larger mana barrier on turn 1. This statement was specifically about shorter fights, and even if that wasn't the case, Energy has comparable damage and 0 CD (until you empower it). If you can get the kill without using Horror during your burst rotation, you can use it earlier. It's supposed to be flexible.

quote:

...Is this like your "Ice and eIce are useless on this class" thing from the last thread?

Dishonest. This is quite literally the opposite of what I said. I said that Ice is counter-synergistic to the main goal of the class, which is to take more damage to generate more protosouls and deal more damage. If you read my post instead of intentionally misrepresenting it to make me look bad, you would know that I said that you would rather use Ice as little as possible so you can play as offensively as possible, with Slough Skin and Darkness to patch up the gaps as needed. You are the one complaining about Protosoul economy - maybe it's because you're bad at the game?

quote:

...doesn't address the post at all? It should have a one turn longer cooldown because [pointless comparison to unspecified "other classes"]? What?

Dishonest. I said that the skill had a very generous cooldown for the amount of utility it provided compared to similar skills on similar classes, even after the nerf. I think it could stand to be increased more.

quote:

Yes, previously you would set up your healing with an offensive effect. Thank you for reiterating my statement.

Dishonest. My point was clearly to highlight that this is not a riveting gameplay feature and functionally nothing changes if it stays or goes. The tooltip is cleaner because it's gone, which is a good thing.

quote:

Well, the best use case would be generating enough MP to tank through INT stack after a recovery phase in longer fights - good example would be Alteon in DLL. Maybe you'd be able to get more of an idea vs harder fights. I'm not sure what nuking Jaania has to do with eFire?

It is quite funny that the person whining about Protosoul economy, which is not a problem in harder fights with high damage outputs, is suggesting that others play harder fights. Generating enough MP to tank through INT stack in harder fights is not tricky when all of your best skills generate MP.

Post #: 7

9/5/2026 18:15:16

dragon eye01
Member

Okay, after taking time to test the class, here are my thoughts.

TFS is right about ProtoSoul economy. In any Inn fight, and even some story fights, dating past about 2024, ProtoSouls come at a pretty decent rate. Class feels good, and if the majority of your testing has been done against those fights you probably haven't felt any issues. In Main Story and some of the earlier Inn fights, the only lever you have to manage the snail's pace at which you get Protosouls is by stacking -All res. When Story bosses are hitting you for 300 damage at -184 all, that doesn't feel like a very good solution. It's a solution, but it's not a good one. Somehow a solution is needed to bring the class' weakest performance and it's strongest performance closer together, because right now it feels very feast or famine. I'll leave that up to Verly to figure out a viable solution, I don't want to backseat dev, I'm just explaining how the class, and some of these changes feel, not how to fix them.

Soul's Edge changes seem geared toward people that are using the class to steamroll hardest of hard Inn fights, so I have no major opinions there. I would argue that if the debuff becomes too detrimental, then the mechanic will end up only mattering for the highest of high end players that are into spreadsheet math on superbosses, while most people avoid it like the plague. If that's the intention of how soul's edge is supposed to work, then that's fine, but it feels like a waste to me if it does end up in that situation.

Most of the changes here didn't move the needle on how ProtoSouls are used. The unempowered skills do feel a little better to use, but they haven't really changed how I value the use of my ProtoSouls, nor how much I'm fiending for them in lower end fights. As far as the skill changes go, I'm pretty content with them. I think they're in good places, Hecatoncheries (I think I'm spelling that right?) might need an unempowered buff though. At the current moment it feels like a filler skill in a sea of other low CD, high-value filler skills, especially now that it can't fill the niche of padding stats for WIS builds. Some 400 IQ gigabrain player will probably figure out how to utilize the -STR/DEX/INT with Darkness to limit nuke damage and still get a bunch of ProtoSouls, but it seems like a very niche use case. 6 hits for special fishing is nice though, so maybe it's fine?

Speaking of WIS builds, I really dislike the level-based MP change. If WIS builds needed to be reined in due to absurd tankiness, that I get and am totally fine with, but this leaves WIS dead in the water. It does give you a bigger MP pool, and marginally increases your healing, but it doesn't feel like there's any reason to heavily invest in it save for, again, the people that are really into spreadsheet math for the rank 4 and 5 Inn fights. I would rather keep the WIS scaling and slowly creep it down until it hits a spot that the devs are happy with, than to gut the scaling entirely. Level-based HP changes are fine though, primarily because there's very few times you're not running 200 END anyway, and these actually moved the healing needle up a little bit at that statline, unless you're hyper-boosting your END with gear, in which case this class already has enough problems with demanding gearswaps, I think.

That about sums it up. Overall I've agreed with most of what TFS has said. I don't feel nearly as strongly on most of the skill changes, just that they don't actually move the needle on the one problem I do have. I don't want ProtoSouls made more plentiful or readily available in the fights they already feel good in, but I do want the lower end of FW's performance brought more in line with its upper end of performance without having to rely on -All resist, because someone coming into the game and getting their hands on the class for the first time shouldn't be told to go farm out Hidebehind, Dead Drop Bear and Veragiri just to be able to use the class' main mechanic more than twice in a typical Main Story fight. How you can accomplish that, I'm not sure, but until that problem is resolved I just don't like the class conceptually.

Post #: 8

9/6/2026 2:31:42

Bluu
Member

quote:

Soul's Edge changes seem geared toward people that are using the class to steamroll hardest of hard Inn fights, so I have no major opinions there. I would argue that if the debuff becomes too detrimental, then the mechanic will end up only mattering for the highest of high end players that are into spreadsheet math on superbosses, while most people avoid it like the plague.

That is the point of a penalty.

quote:

Some 400 IQ gigabrain player will probably figure out how to utilize the -STR/DEX/INT with Darkness to limit nuke damage and still get a bunch of ProtoSouls

At that point you would just shield the nuke and equip Uragiri on one of the boss' filler attacks. Generally, the easier and more sensible solution is the correct one.

quote:

I would rather keep the WIS scaling and slowly creep it down until it hits a spot that the devs are happy with, than to gut the scaling entirely.

There was no WIS scaling. It was 5% of your maximum MP. Reducing that value would make WIS more important, not less. Changing it to a flat amount irrespective of WIS makes WIS less important, but not completely useless because having a higher total mana pool is beneficial.

quote:

but I do want the lower end of FW's performance brought more in line with its upper end of performance without having to rely on -All resist, because someone coming into the game and getting their hands on the class for the first time shouldn't be told to go farm out Hidebehind, Dead Drop Bear and Veragiri just to be able to use the class' main mechanic more than twice in a typical Main Story fight.

This sentiment is reasonable, but why would you need more than two Protosouls in a low DPT, low HP fight? That being said, I do see the argument for wanting a skill that makes you take more damage.

Post #: 9

9/6/2026 4:35:36

dragon eye01
Member

I should clarify a bit.

quote:

There was no WIS scaling. It was 5% of your maximum MP. Reducing that value would make WIS more important, not less. Changing it to a flat amount irrespective of WIS makes WIS less important, but not completely useless because having a higher total mana pool is beneficial.

The 5% of Max MP is what I was talking about, since your MP pool directly scales off of WIS. I would like WIS to be more important than it is now, even if it has to be less important than it was in V1. I like dedicated WIS builds having a more substantial reason to exist as a viable competitor to INT or DEX builds, whereas V2 puts WIS firmly as your 3rd most important stat below END and Mainstat.

quote:

This sentiment is reasonable, but why would you need more than two Protosouls in a low DPT, low HP fight? That being said, I do see the argument for wanting a skill that makes you take more damage.

Not all low-DPT fights are also low-HP. Remthalas (Reawakening Version, not Mr. Nameless Version) is a good example of a high-HP, low-DPT fight, sitting at 16,000 HP at level 90 but only dealing about 100-150 DPT even with no All resist. Now, V2 can just Energy spam through these fights for the most part, so like you said you don't actually need more than 2 ProtoSouls for any of these fights. You actually probably don't even need 1, but I believe a class with this much depth shouldn't be reduced to [Flesh of Fire > Energy > Energy > Energy > Energy > Energy > pImmolation > Potion > Repeat until dead] in non-Inn fights. Techno still encourages you to learn heat mechanics well before you reach any fight where they're necessary. Pirate still encourages you to learn to build treasure by rewarding you with opening damage. DragonSlayer comes with the Weighted Armor passive so in almost any gearset aside from MPM stack, you're always building counters, even in the most basic of fights. Paladin builds Inner Light so passively it hardly needs a tutorial. FleshWeaver, in its current version, stands apart as a class that makes no attempt to get you to engage with its primary mechanic until you start reaching about Difficulty 3 Inn Fights, and actually rewards you for the opposite by encouraging you to spend MP on a spammable MP skill that doesn't contribute to your ProtoSoul gain.

It's far from unplayable, in fact it's easier than ever to facetank and repeatedly nuke any easy, early game fight. V1's lackluster performance against low-DPT enemies was a problem, but V2's traded that for a different problem. What leaves a bad taste in my mouth about V2 is that the class currently rewards you for not learning to play it, right up until energy spam stops working and you're dropped into the deep end of learning how to play what is by far the most complicated class in the game. I like class design that lets the natural difficulty of fights pressure you into optimization, and dislike FW V1 for inversing the relationship between you and the enemy by encouraging riskier (and more farm-intensive) tactics against lower-threat fights. I also like class design that teaches you how to use the class by rewarding you for using it correctly. FW V2 fails at this imo where every other class has, more or less (week 1 DragonSlayer was rough), succeeded.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to address the Soul's Edge thing. If the point of the penalty is to tell you not to use Flesh skills at low HP values, then just treat it like a normal mana cost and don't let someone use Flesh skills without the prerequisite HP. If the intention is for people to play risky with Soul's Edge, then the first stack is something the average person should be willing to consider taking. If exponential scaling with buff and debuff stacking is possible in DF's engine, that might be worth looking into, to punish people that get too greedy while also letting the average person play around a bit with the mechanic.

< Message edited by dragon eye01 -- 9/6/2026 4:46:57 >

DF	Post #: 10

9/6/2026 5:26:33

GodJank
Member

quote:

I like dedicated WIS builds having a more substantial reason to exist as a viable competitor to INT or DEX builds

It is a viable competitor, and WIS is arguably more important than INT or DEX. 200 WIS/END is used in a lot of hard fights. More mana = bigger barrier, more mana = more mana skills you can use while still keeping your barrier up. Not sure if FleshWeaver really needs a skill that directly scales with WIS like Mana Grenades, unless it's maybe a defensive or utility skill (which honestly could be pretty interesting)

But yeah I think it's pretty annoying how hard Protosouls are to get outside of the Inn. Maybe the class should have an Inn restriction specifically, where it needs to take 700 damage in the Inn, but lower in quests? Maybe 300, or 400?

Post #: 11

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All Forums >> [Artix Entertainment Games] >> [DragonFable] >> DragonFable General Discussion >> Friday, September 4 Design Notes: Fleshweaver Part 1 (Part 1)

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