Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 341 - 350: Bold Idea

Chapter 341: Chapter 350: Bold Idea

After reaching this conclusion, Instructor Ding immediately set about readjusting his talents and skills without pause.

The problem appeared to be with the talent "Oathbreaker."

Theoretically, it should only affect the skills of the Light Series and the Dark Series, or more precisely, it should only convert from the Light Series to the Dark Series.

After all, "Oathbreaker" is a priest talent, and the quest required to activate it involves a transformation from the Light Series to the Dark Series.

But now, it seemed that the conversion effect of "Oathbreaker" was not limited to these series alone; it could also convert elemental spells such as ice, fire, earth, and wind into the Arcane Series.

As for whether there are other conversion effects? Instructor Ding hadn’t tested them yet, so he did not know.

Currently, all of Instructor Ding’s equipment was stacked for increased Elemental damage, so he simply copied over the construction of the "Biased Elementalist" as he had done before, retaining most of the talents and skills that enhanced Elemental damage.

The other parts, which were less important, were re-extracted to point to Arcane Series output skills and some special enhancement talents.

After making all the adjustments, Instructor Ding carefully checked his setup, then changed the transformation of all his equipment once again.

The transformation system in "Shadow World" is quite powerful, as players could use any equipment they had worn for transformations and could also purchase some special appearances.

Instructor Ding was a player who enjoyed role-playing and would change his transformation according to the character.

Originally, he was an Elementalist dressed in leather armor, but now he had transformed into an Arcane Mage clad in cloth armor.

Afterward, Instructor Ding went to the main city’s training dummy and executed various Arcane Skills on it.

Arcane Barrage, Arcane Bomb, Arcane Collision...

After trying several Arcane Skills and considering factors such as mana consumption, single target damage, area damage, and output cycle, he found a more reasonable output method.

"Success!"

"Master’s done it!!"

Instructor Ding glanced at his damage statistics plugin and successfully dealt about 15,000 damage per second per target!

Although this damage wasn’t quite as high as the previous 18,000 of the Biased Elementalist, it was still significantly higher than the other builds of the time.

The extra 3,000 damage per second was more than enough to help his team make substantial progress in raid instances.

But Instructor Ding clearly wasn’t satisfied yet, because compared to the 18,000 damage per second of the Biased Elementalist, the new "Oathbreak Arcane" build still fell short.

Its only advantage was that it could seamlessly transition from Biased Elementalist without wasting any equipment.

But the issues of other builds’ weaknesses were still unresolved.

"Is there any other way to save this situation...

"Surely this game won’t just evolve from ’Elementalist World’ to ’Arcane World,’ right? That would still be unbalanced."

From the current standpoint, the "Oathbreak Arcane" build was essentially complete, though of course there was still room for optimization, such as testing each talent for its enhancement effects separately or refining the output method cycle.

This way, perhaps the damage per second could be further increased by one or two thousand.

However, the foundation of this build was already set, and there shouldn’t be any fundamental changes.

Even so, "Oathbreak Arcane" was merely equivalent to developing an alternative plan to "Biased Elementalist," and the game’s balance issues remained unsolved.

Just then, as Instructor Ding scrolled through the list of glyphs for Arcane Skills, his eyes suddenly lit up.

"Hmm? What’s this!

"How come I never noticed it before?

"If this glyph really works, that would be awesome!"

The glyph Instructor Ding saw was called "Arcane Conversion."

It wasn’t a newly introduced special glyph, but rather a glyph that had existed since version 60, associated with a skill called "Arcane Wisdom."

Arcane Wisdom, a common buff-type skill, could enhance the intelligence attributes and spell damage of the entire group.

It’s usually a must-have buff in raid instances, but having just one person activate it was enough.

The skill itself had four different glyphs to choose from: one extended the spell’s duration, another added additional spirit attributes, and so on.

The most commonly used glyph effect by players was "Double Effectiveness," which doubled the buff effect of "Arcane Wisdom" on oneself.

Due to its clear cost-effectiveness, any player who chose this skill usually selected it.

Beyond this, "Arcane Wisdom" had another glyph effect that had always been overlooked, called "Draw Inferences from One Instance.

Its effect was: immersing yourself in the mysteries of Arcane knowledge can lead to more insights into other knowledge.

The description was somewhat vague, but players had already tested in the 1960s that this glyph’s effect depended on the player’s Arcane Damage enhancement, boosting the currently highest other type of skill as well.

First, it was a choice between physical attack power and spell power.

Second, it enhanced the highest type of magic within a magic system.

However, very few players chose this glyph previously for a simple reason: its enhancement effect depended on the player’s Arcane Damage attribute, but the game offered very few means to boost Arcane Damage.

When enhancing other types of skills, another discount was applied, reducing the enhancement effect even further—it was just like a mosquito’s leg, nowhere near comparable to "Double Effectiveness."

But now, a lightbulb went off in Instructor Ding’s mind.

"Hey, guys, I just had a bold idea!

"If I now stack Elemental Damage, convert it into Arcane Damage through ’Oathbreaker,’ and the ’Double Effectiveness’ glyph can then convert Arcane Damage into other damage!

"Doesn’t that mean we can use this method to add a buff layer to every other BD??"

As soon as Instructor Ding proposed this hypothesis, quite a few people in the live stream and guild opposed it.

"It doesn’t seem feasible. If you now want to convert Elemental Damage into Physical Damage, sure, you can stack up Elemental Damage, but then you wouldn’t be able to stack Physical Damage anymore! Who knows, it might not even hit as hard as originally stacking Physical Damage!"

Instructor Ding was momentarily stunned, realizing this reasoning made sense.

After all, the original Physical Output build had been achieved through many talents and equipment, and if these were stripped out to point to Elemental Damage, wouldn’t the original Physical Output enhancement go down?

However, Instructor Ding didn’t give up just yet and insisted, "No worries, practice reveals the truth!

"Whether it works or not, we still have to try it to find out."