These are the changes Michi has proposed (or built) into 18.7. http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...otes-18-7-0-20
Martial Artist
• Nano Anvil Fists provides a melee damage override
• Greatly reduced heal nano costs
• Nano Matrix of Ka: Reduced casting requirements
• AC Buffs no longer require Matter Creation
• Nano Form of Risan: Increases evades by 60, changed to the AC Buff nano line
• Lowered defensive check on Delirium and Flower of Life
• Sharpened Kuma Tonfas
• Added new weapon: X1-R4 Viral Force-Blades
• Nano Four Fists of Kali: Increases MA by 160, Sharp Objects by 60, and Fast Attack by 30
• Nano Martial Arts Mastery: Increases MA by 60 and Sharp Objects by 30
• Increased Taunt nano effectiveness
•Increased nano cost in Zazen Stance; lowered HoT of additional Zazen heals
Edit:
Note that these changes are in addition to or to augment previous changes proposed by Genele http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...otes-18-7-0-17 as seen below:
Martial Artists
• Martial Artists have gotten a new nano program called Zazen Stance. cancelling this nano formula removes all of your nano pool. It will increases your Add. Nano Cost and Healing Efficiency. It will decreases your: CriticalIncrease, all damage types, Evade-ClsC , Dodge-Rng and Duck-Exp. The duration of this stance is 4 hours and that it can only be used by Martial Artists.
• Martial Artist healing nano program have been updated. The target/team will get a heal over time if you are in the Zazen Stance when executing the healing nano formula. The Heal over time from the single target nano line stacks with the team nano line. The target/team does NOT get a heal over time if you are NOT in the Zazen Stance when executing this nano formula. All heals will have a 2 second recharge. Instead of locking the martial artist in recharge, all heals have gotten a line cooldown. Meaning if the MA has the nano pool to support it, he will be able to heal with the team heals and the single target heals at the same time making him challenge even the doctor when it comes to healing. Martial Artist heals will have a high casting cost as a result of this massive transformation and will likely have to focus more on nano cost/first aid/nano delta to make an effective healing setup.
• Martial Artist Critical increase buff line has been updated with the values from the agent aimed shot line: The highest critical increase value the martial artist will be able to buff their target with is 11 points and the martial artist will be able to buff himself with 28 points of critical increase at the highest level.
• Martial Artist Fists of the Winter Flame buff has a line cooldown of 2 minutes and now buffs all damage types.
Several of these are fairly straight-forward quality of life adjustments, and clearly Michi has listened to the MA response to the original 18.7 patch.
Personally, I'm very pleased with these changes - even from a subjective point of view, these changes clearly indicate that the real, serious problems that MA's were facing from the previous 18.7 patch were considered and adjusted accordingly.
I'll comment on all individual changes though:
• Nano Anvil Fists provides a melee damage override - As Paav wanted, Excellent change, and I wonder if it will affect some things like: aimed shot becoming melee, ranger perks, and most importantly MA perks?
• Greatly reduced heal nano costs - If any were aware of the heal cost on MA heals in the original 18.7, you'd know that this is needed. (an obvious change)
• Nano Matrix of Ka: Reduced casting requirements These were quite high before, so it's good if they are slightly lower, I assume we won't be able to cast under divest/NR1 though.
• AC Buffs no longer require Matter Creation - a good QoL adjustment with few repercussions other than a minor IP saving.
• Nano Form of Risan: Increases evades by 60, changed to the AC Buff nano line - this is OK, but not great, it means two things: 1. we'll gain 20 evades (RI+FoR = 180 vs previous FoR = 160) at the expense of a decent chunk of NCU. The AC buff (I assume) on FoR isn't really needed we'll get it anyway. The other thing is that now if we want to use GSF, it'll be less of a nerf - now we'll get 78+60=138 , instead of 160 (FoR) OR 78 (GSF) which means our evades loss for a gain of a lot of RS is significantly less. Overall, for this reason, a good change.
• Lowered defensive check on Delirium and Flower of Life - this is highly valuable, And I think it will make lower level MA's much more deadly in TL5ish+ PVP
• Sharpened Kuma Tonfas - ok
• Added new weapon: X1-R4 Viral Force-Blades - I assume these will have a sneak attack tacked on them, if so, a decent change.
• Nano Four Fists of Kali: Increases MA by 160, Sharp Objects by 60, and Fast Attack by 30 - OMFG sweet. This really is a good change for MA's. Any MA worth his salt knows how valuable those last 2-3 pieces of CC are to get that SO up to use tears. This will really make things a lot better and make MA's more functional under different setups (i.e more HP). Also, usable at TL5ish too which will make lava caps and others much more deadly (note the 50% DR check)
• Nano Martial Arts Mastery: Increases MA by 60 and Sharp Objects by 30 - ya, very nice, less usable at this level - but consider that this is now the ONLY buff in game for SO, and holy crap will that make a difference for lowby PVP... kizzers at level 14 etc.
• Increased Taunt nano effectiveness -ok
•Increased nano cost in Zazen Stance; lowered HoT of additional Zazen heals - ok good, I think this is really a decent change, it's clear Michi read the responses from the initial 18.7 patch, and this is ideal. It means MA's CAN be a support healer but we'll not be completely nerfed for standard function in standard stance. Props Michi - great job.
Overall - these changes indicate that Michi has listened to the MA community and made a great effort to make the prof more utilitarian (Zazen, melee dmg buff, SA att weap, SO buffs, etc.) and we'll also get clear benefit from the deflect mechanism which I haven't mentioned yet.
General Changes
• Glance adjustments:
• Glance chance changed to 0%->10% between 0->3000 skill in Deflect (previously "Parry")
• Sneak Attack will do half damage if deflected
• Full Auto, if a shot is deflected, all subsequent bullets will do half damage
• Dimach cannot be glanced
Syndicate Brain symbiants have had extra modifications applied
• Wistful Apparition can occasionally drop high-QL Martial Art attacks
All things here are very reasonable fixes and based on standard endgame IP distribution for MA we should end up with about 7%*50% = 3.5% overall mitigation
I'm not entirely sure the deflect change is that valuable, but since we IP it already there's no reason to complain.