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Explorers
In General
The characters of the Explorernote classes start the game as a Beginner. These were the first classes in the game, and are thus the most basic in terms of skills and story. Their overall role in the plot is just as simple. Adventurers basically wander the world looking for glory, running across dangerous monsters that the Black Wings are responsible for in some way.
After becoming one of the five Explorer classes, the player character is expected to level up and advance to the second job of that class at Level 30, where they will permanently choose which sub-class path to take. The player character advances to the third job at Level 60, and fourth job at Level 100.note The maximum level of any Explorer character is currently 275.
The RED update gives Explorers a storyline, with the Destiny update revamping said plotline.
Tropes Associated With All Explorers
- The Artifact: The ultimate explorer attacks provided by the equivalent job instructer after doing the soul dew quest (or having an ultimate explorer when it was available) are actually skills that the equivalent Cygnus Knight used to have access to now before Cygnus Awakens. For example Irena's Wind Piercing is the old Wind Archer Wind Piercing skill they could have only used in their unique transformation before their revamp.
- Awesomebut Impractical: Since the ability to start a level 50 explorer after reaching 120 on a Cygnus Knight was removed the only way to get the unique attack and the ability to equip items up to 10 levels early can only be aquired now by doing the Sensho soul dew method. The drops are so exeedingly rare on this and the following mission that a player can probably level much more than 10 levels by just doing missions before finishing this quest.
- But Thou Must!: Even if you notice that "Olive" is acting strangely, you must give "her" the Nihal Jewel to advance the storyline.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Maple Leaf used as a bookmark in the Explorer Book becomes the Seal Stone of Maple Island
- Dimensional Traveller: Explorers begin in a mysterious black void that exists outside of Maple World, with the implication being that the player's explorer character is literally them having entered Maple World from the "real" world. It is the fact that the Explorer comes from another dimension that allows them to enter the Door to the Present where the Black Mage is sealed. To an extent, this applies to your friends as well;
- Sugar: Secretly an avatar of the Goddess of Maple World
- Tess: The same Tess from Ellin Forest theme dungeon, meaning he is either Older Than He Looks or a time traveler.
- Rondo: An anima from Grandis
- Divergent Character Evolution: Official designs of the explorer classes only ever focused on one representative of each class starting with the RED update, however the Destiny update formally gives a canon design for every explorer class and for both genders to provide updated portraits for their story dialoge.
- Doomed Hometown: When the Explorer inadvertently releases the Black Mage, he attacks Maple Island.
- Five-Man Band: The RED Explorer plot puts the player into one of these. Their jobs will change based on the player's job so that they always consist of the 5 jobs.
- Fun with Acronyms: Including you, the main group of friends; Sugar, Tess, Olive, Rondo and You spell "STORY". Combine it with the acronym formed by the Legends classes and you get "MAPLESTORY"
- Long-Lost Relative: Tess is Kyrin's older brother. In most cases he will become a pirate under the tutelage of his sister, although versions of the explorer plot reveal he's keeping his identity as her brother a secret from her.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Upon discovering the seal on the Black Mage is weakening, the Explorer attempts to fix it, but he escapes instead.
- Player and Protagonist Integration: The Dimensional Traveler aspect of Explorers puts them at the highest end of the scale in the game, by lightly implying that your explorer is you, while every other class in the game is someone who is already a part of the world.
- Prestige Class: Explorers can advance into one of five basic first job classes and then for their second job advancement they can choose from 2-3 specialized classes to advance in and their class name keeps changing as they make more advancements. This is a growth setup that is wholly unique to explorers, While a Warrior can become a Fighter who becomes a Crusader who becomes a Hero, a Dawn Warrior is always called a Dawn Warrior for all of their advancements.
- Protectorate: Can declare people of Maple World as theirs when they meet the Goddess of the Maple World.
- Retcon: Originally, the explorer was a Dimensional Traveler who came to maple world, as of the Destiny Update, the revamped explorer storyline made them a native to Maple World.
- Similar Squad: You and your group of friends are meant to evoke a new generation of Legends, there is even a point where they split up to consult with their counterpart (Pirates consult with Luminous since Shade has been forgotten) for guidance.
- Suddenly Voiced: The "Destiny" update gives every explorer class their own voice lines during skills, much like most modern classes have.
- True Companions: Can declare that they cherish their adventuring companions more than anything else when they meet the Goddess of the Maple World.
- Ur-Example: Warrior, Magician, Thief, and Bowman were the first classes available in the game, as a result they set the precedent for nearly all future classes of their job, such as nearly all warriors getting 100% knock-back resistance, nearly all thieves having triple jumps, and nearly all mages having magic guard.
- Wham Episode: The Black Mage finally explicitly breaks free of his seal in the Explorer plot.
- Where It All Began: The Explorer plotline starts and concludes at Maple Island.
Warriors
Voiced by: Lee Ho-san (Korean, male), Kim Eun-Ah (Korean, female), Brent Mukai (English, male), Valerie Arem (English, female)
"Warriors are in many ways the physically toughest class. They will usually be found at the front of the party taking damage and bringing their powerful weapons to bear against monsters in one-on-one combat. Warriors are also able to use much of the weaponry in the game and depending upon which career path they choose to pursue, they'll be able to specialize and get really powerful with certain kinds of weapons."
- - Acorn Story: Playing a Warrior
The bread and butter of melee characters, the Warrior deals up close damage while drawing the attention away from the other ranged classes. Warriors can take various paths at job advancement, becoming a Hero, Paladin, or Dark Knight, changing their role in the party to some degree.
Note: Please only place tropes here that apply to the Warrior class as a whole. Tropes specific to certain job advancements can go under that advancement's section.
Tropes associated with all Warrior Classes:
- Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Their first and second job advancements come from a Native American desert tribe.
- Death Mountain: Their job advancement city.
- Double Jump: War Leap, while not the best double jump around, is still a step up from their original incarnation which didn't have any double jump.
- Foe-Tossing Charge: Charge acts as this, dragging any monsters caught in your path along with you.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Or at least most do until job advancement. This is due to the damage formulas for swords being more balanced than other weapons.
- Immune to Flinching: Their shared Power Stance skill is what gave this technique its universal in-game term "Stance", until eventually being renamed to the more indicative "Knock-back Resistance".
- Mighty Glacier: They're basically the exact opposite of Magicians, heavily armored but relatively slow to traverse ground due to lacking the Thieves' triple jump, the Magician's teleport, or the Bowman's multi-directional jumps.
- Power Creep: 100% Knockback resistance, which was once a defining feature of Warriors, slowly became availible to more and more classes until the "Destiny" update finally gave every single class in the game passives that will give them 100% Knockback resistance by 4th job.
- Status-Buff Dispel: Can remove enemy buffs and temporarily prevent them from casting new ones through Magic Crash
- You Will Not Evade Me: Each one of them gains a skill that allows them to pull in monsters towards them, Combo Fury for Heroes, Close Combat for Paladins, and Spear Sweep for Dark Knights. The Destiny revamp instead replaces Hero's version with a persuing dash attack instead, giving all three classes a different way to get closer to enemies.
Fighters/Crusaders/Heroes
Voiced by: Naoya Nakagome (Japanese, male), Miyaka Ogura (Japanese, female)
"Heroes specialize in Swords and Axes as primary weapons, and either Shields or Medallions as secondary weapons. Their job specialty skill is Combo Attack, which gives combos when attacking enemies that increase the player's damage, and can be consumed to utilize special attacks that debuff enemies, as well as buff you with Enrage, which allows the player's to focus their attacks on one enemy while increasing damage output. Their second job is Fighter, their third job is Crusader, and their fourth job is Hero. "
- - Maplewiki on Heroes
Tropes associated with Fighters, Crusaders, and Heroes:
- Awesome, but Impractical: Spending combo orbs on special combo moves is usually considered impractical compared to simply keeping the combo orbs for their stat buffs and using basic moves instead. The Destiny update acknowledges this and simply removed combo orb costs from all basic skills.
- Boring, but Practical: Compared to other classes, their attack patterns are very basic.
- Charged Attack: Their signature passive, Combo Attack, features the collect style, collecting orbs to increase damage or to expend them later on specific attacks.
- Combat Pragmatist: Chance Attack is a passive that increases damage done to stunned, blinded, and frozen enemies
- Counter-Attack:
- Rage reflects damage taken back to monsters
- Their Pre-Big Bang skill, Power Guard, shared with Pages, returned a percentage of damage dealt to the player back to the enemy. Unlike Paladins, their massive HP pool and its second Ability, which lowers the players own Defense, made this a highly useful skill.
- Flaming Sword: After becoming a Hero, they have multiple skills that ignite their weapon. Their base damage-dealing attack lights their weapon up with bright red fire and a cooldown extends the blazing blade even further.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: Combo Fury may also be used to pull yourself towards an enemy instead of pulling them towards you
- Healing Factor: Self-Recovery
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Though additional passive boosts for using an axe favor choosing axes over swords, as of the Destiny update, all Hero attack animations are sword based.
- Irony: His name in both ways. He is potentially one of maple world's heroes preventing the Black Mage from being released upon it, at the same time despite his name he isn't part of nor related to the heroes of maple world who actually defeated the Black Mage.
- Super-Toughness: Though it doesn't have the defensive buffs of a Paladin or the extra HP and draining of a Dark Knight, it's still a warrior and has high HP coupled with high physical defense.
- Temporary Blindness: Panic can inflict this
Pages/White Knights/Paladins
Voiced by: Yosuke Omomo (Japanese, male), Yukina Shuto (Japanese, female)
"Paladins specialize in Swords and Blunt Weapons as primary weapons, and either Shields or Rosaries as secondary weapons. They utilize the power of fire, ice, lightning, and holy elements to scar the battlefield. Their job specialty skill is Elemental Charge, which increases their damage as well as reduces the damage they take from enemies when chaining different elemental attacks together, giving them superior defensive abilities to their counterparts. Their second job is Page, their third job is White Knight, and their fourth job is Paladin. "
- - Maplewiki on Paladins
Tropes associated with Pages, White Knights, and Paladins:
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Gets hit with this hard in end-game content, where having massive defense means nothing to bosses that all do health percentage based damage, although reworks have addressed this by giving them ways to slightly defend against these kinds of moves.
- They are ostensibly meant to use all four elemental attacks in a cycle, as evidenced by them continuing to get attack buffs in later advancements, but it's generally considered easier to just alternate between lightning and holy for the sake of building the Elemental Charge buff, the additional damage each element does for attacking enemies afflicted with the previous element generally not worth the fact that Fire and Blizzard still hit fewer enemies than Lightning and Holy even in later job buffs. This mechanic managed to be so impractical that the "Destiny" revamp throws it out altogether making Paladins a purely Holy elemental warrior.
- Artistic License – Physics: A Paladin can use Heaven's Hammer even if he has no surface to slam it against (such as swimming in Aqua Road or Soaring in the Dragon Rider scenario). Justified, maybe, as it's not a real hammer, but it does look strange.
- Carry a Big Stick / Heroes Prefer Swords: Stands out from other warrior classes as the choice of blunt weapon or sword will trigger different passive buffs, making both fairly viable where the other two clearly favor one of their possible weapons over the other.
- Charged Attack: Their Signature Passive, Elemental Charge, Increases their damage and defense when they use charge skills of different elements in quick succession. If Blast is used when fully charged they gain a strong offense buff
- Elemental Powers: Before the "Destiny" revamp, Paladin could gain skills to attack with Fire, Ice, Lightning as Pages and White Knights. Paladins could get the ability to attack with Holy, and they benefited from using all elements, as quickly switching between elemental attacks gives them a buff that increased their damage, as well as inflicting a debuff on enemies that made them take more damage from the next element.
- Heal Thyself: HP Recovery allows them recover a certain percentage of their health. The amount healed decreases if used in quick succession.
- Holy Hand Grenade: The "Destiny" revamp ditches all of the Paladin's elemental powers and reworks their moveset to focus entirely on holy elemental attacks instead.
- Invulnerable Attack: Sacrosanctity temporarily grants the Paladin complete invincibility for its duration
- I Shall Taunt You: can threaten enemies to make them attack with less strength.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: They gain Shield Mastery, improving their defense and chance to block greatly when using a shield. The bonuses from Shield Mastery also apply when equipped with a Rosary.
- Magic Knight: They mix in elemental attacks alongside their standard blows as of the RED update.
- Magikarp Power: As it says in the description, most players don't have the patience to stick it out for a Paladin and Heaven's Hammer. More specifically, this warrior job branch actually has decently powerful 3rd and 4th job skills, but the Page is horrendously outclassed by the Fighter and Spearman in almost all respects, making it compulsory for an aspiring Paladin player to have to wade through 70 levels of feeling completely powerless. Naturally, this makes a Paladin among the rarest classes. This has only become more prominent with time as Paladins are still considere to be fairly average ftom first to fourth job, but with one of the strongest fifth job kits out there.
- Necessary Drawback: Parashock Guard reduces the Paladin's guard chance and defense but increases damage of the paladin and guard chance of party members while reducing the damage party members take.
- Status-Buff Dispel: While all adventurer Warriors have Magic Crash, Paladins also gain Smite Shield, which stuns monsters struck and removes all of their buffs as well as preventing them from casting anymore.
- Stone Wall: Tied for the highest defense out of all characters and has very good magical defenses too. Cherry Tapping seems to be the only way to kill a Paladin.
- The Paladin
Spearmen/Berserker/Dark Knight
Berserkers were formerly Dragon Knights.
Voiced by: Sohei Horikane (Japanese, male), Hikaru Iida (Japanese, female)
"Dark Knights specialize in Spears and Polearms as primary weapons, and Iron Chains as secondary weapons. They use a variety of supportive buffs to support their party members, as well as their own. Their job specialty skill is Evil Eye, a dark spirit that heals, buffs, and attacks alongside the player. Later on, the dark spirit can be absorbed to give a boost to damage, as well as to allow the Gungnir's Descent attack to be used without a cooldown. They also can do this with the skill Final Pact, which can be activated when their HP reaches 0. However, the skill has a 10 minute cooldown, and if they do not eliminate 30 monsters or attack a boss 20 times within the time limit, they will lose the buff and die anyway. Their second job is Spearman, their third job is Berserker, and their fourth job is Dark Knight."
- -Maplewiki on Dark Knights
Tropes associated with Spearmen, Berserkers, and Dark Knights:
- The Berserker
- Black Knight: Well, Dark Knight...
- Casting a Shadow: Their attacks are all dark themed though interestingly none of them are dark elemental
- Counter-Attack: Revenge of the Evil Eye allows your Evil Eye to counterattack any enemy that hits you.
- Dark Is Not Evil
- Death from Above: Gungnir's Descent drops a legendary spear onto an enemy
- Devour the Dragon: Sacrifice consumes the Evil Eye to temporarily boost damage and remove the cooldown of Gungnir's Descent
- Familiar: Their Signature Passive, Evil Eye
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Dark Impale repeatedly stabs multiple monsters in quick succession.
- Injured Vulnerability: A variant of, Final Pact also provides them with bonus speed and damage if their health is above a certain threshold.
- Life Drain: Lord of Darkness passively provides this, Dark Third takes this up a notch for its duration.
- Living on Borrowed Time: Post-RED patch, their 4th job skill Final Pact can allow them do this, and even give them a full resurrection if they can attack enough in time.
- Non-Indicative Name: Spearmen can also use polearms, but their mastery passives provide extra boosts that heavily favor them choosing their namesake spears over polearms.
- Spin Attack: LaMancha Spear
Magicians
Voiced by: Lee So-eun (Korean, female), Lee Ho-san (Korean, male), Peggy O'Neal (English, female), Tony Azzolino (English, male)
"In terms of sheer power, almost no other class can compare to the Magician. Unlike many of the other classes in MapleStory, Magicians prefer to attack monsters and defend themselves using magic rather than weapons and armor. While they have the ability to attack with a staff or a wand to defend themselves, their physical frailty makes this a poor choice for most magicians. Depending on how they choose to advance their class, Magician characters may become damage dealing Wizards who use fire and poison, crowd-controlling Wizards that use ice and lightning, or even Clerics that can use their magical abilities to heal themselves and others!."
- - Acorn Story: Playing a Magician
MapleStory's main magic using class. These masters of magic use large amounts of MP to attack their opponents from afar. At job advancement they can take on different roles: Bishops, who focus on healing and support; Ice/Lightning Mages, who freeze large groups of enemies and/or attack them with lightning, or Fire/Poison Mages, who specialize in damage over time using fire and poison.
Note: Please only place tropes here that apply to the Magician class as a whole. Tropes specific to certain job advancements can go under that advancement's section.
Tropes associated with all Magician Classes:
- Familiar: F/P mages get Ifrit, I/L mages get Elquines, and Bishops get Bahamut.
- The Lost Woods: Their job advancement city.
- Mana Drain: MP Eater is pretty much the only way to slowly save on MP potions.
- Mana Shield: Probably their common & most important skill. Forgetting to use it will be the most common reason why magician classes die, usually in one or two hits. With the shield on, and while chugging potions, they become nearly impossible to kill. They're even harder to kill when a Magician combines their Magic Guard with a familiar that restores their MP (such as Jr. Boogie 1).
- Squishy Wizard: Subverted. At first they appear as this, but their Magic Guard skill allows them to absorb astoundingly large amount of damage. Played straight however, if they don't use Magic Guard...
- Teleport Spam: Their method of transportation. It's far from fancy, but it does its job well.
Fire/Poison Wizards/Mage/Arch Mage
Voiced by: Misano Sakai (Japanese, female), Shinya Takahashi (Japanese, male)
"The Arch Mage (Fire, Poison) job branch is renowned for having a lot of Do T (damage over time) with skills such as Poison Breath, Poison Mist, and Paralyze, combining the elements of Fire and Poison, and their signature screen clearing Mist Eruption, which explodes any mists set up by Poison Mist or Flame Haze. Their job specialty skill is Elemental Drain, which gives extra damage based on the number of different Do T stacks one places on monsters. Their second job is Wizard (Fire, Poison), their third job is Mage (Fire, Poison), and their fourth job is Arch Mage (Fire, Poison). '''
- - Maplewiki on Fire/Poison Arch Mages
Tropes associated with Fire/Poison Wizards, Mages, and Arch Mages:
- Colony Drop: Their ultimate skill, Meteor Shower.
- Combat Pragmatist: Burning Magic enables them to deal extra damage to and have their Damage Over Time effects last longer on stunned, frozen, paralyzed, or blinded enemies
- Damage Over Time: Dedicated specialist. Their Signature Passive, Elemental Drain, increases their total damage based on how many Damage Over Time effects are laid out and their fifth job skill Do T Punisher, delivers more attacks the more Damage Over Time effects are laid out.
- Glass Cannon: Compared to the other two. At least until they get Paralyze.
- Mana Burn: Can inflict extra damage by burning monsters' mana
- Mystical Plague: Plague may be pushing it, but monsters can be infected with summoned Viral Slime which deals damage over time, clings to other monsters and spreads.
- Set the World on Fire: Through Ignite, all fire attacks have a chance of leaving flames at a target location, which will continue to do damage to enemies caught within them
- Stuff Blowing Up: Poison Breath, Explosion, and Myst Eruption.
- Status Effects: Paralyze and Poison.
- Technicolor Fire: Meggido Flame is a strong blue flame that is launched forward to burn a single enemy
- Wreathed in Flames: Inferno Aura acts as this, burning nearby enemies while it's on.
Ice/Lightning Wizards/Mage/Arch Mage
Voiced by: Miyaka Ogura (Japanese, female), Naoya Nakagome (Japanese, male)
"The Arch Mage (Ice, Lightning) job branch focuses on combining the elements of Ice and Lightning to deal extra damage to monsters. Their job specialty skill is Freezing Crush, which allows one to deal extra Lightning damage on monsters frozen by Ice skills. Ice skills can slow down the enemy, with a maximum of 5 stacks; the more stacks, the higher the damage boost for Lightning skills. Their second job is Wizard (Ice, Lightning) third job is Mage (Ice, Lightning), and their fourth job is Arch Mage (Ice, Lightning). "
- - Maplewiki on Ice/Lightning Arch Mages
Tropes associated with Ice/Lightning Wizards, Mages, and Arch Mages:
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Stacking Freeze on enemies allows Ice/Lightning Mages to ignore their defense
- Barrier Warrior: A variation of, Absolute Zero Aura creates an aura that increases stance and debuff/elemental resistance while decreasing damage taken for you and your allies.
- Combat Pragmatist: Storm Magic enables them to deal extra damage to stunned, frozen, or blinded enemies
- Glass Cannon: Just as frail as their F/P brethren but freezing means you get hit a lot less.
- Harmless Freezing: the freezing itself does not kill. It does, though, make an enemy vulnerable to further attacks. Their Signature passive, Freezing Clutch, increases the max critical damage they do to a target based on how many freeze stacks they have. Invoked with Freezing Breath, where you freeze yourself while attacking, becoming temporarily invulnerable.
- Personal Raincloud: Thunder Storm is a weaponized version.
- Teleport Spam: They take this a step further than other Explorer Mages by gaining a hyper skill that passively increases the range of their Teleport
- Weather Manipulation: Their ultimate skill, Blizzard, which summons Ice crystals from the sky onto enemies.
- You Will Not Evade Me: Can pull in monsters with Glacier Chain.
Clerics/Priests/Bishops
Voiced by: Saki Yamakita (Japanese, female), Ryohei Arai (Japanese, male)
"The Bishop specializes in Holy elemental skills as well as party support, including the following:
- Bless, which increases the Attack Power and Magic Attack of party members, getting upgraded to Advanced Blessing later on.
- Holy Symbol, which increases the EXP given to the player and their party.
- Heal, which, as the name suggests, heals the player and their party members within range. Angel Ray, a main attacking skill in 4th job, also has this function.
- Dispel, which cancels out most Abnormal Statuses left on the player and their party members by enemies.
- Holy Fountain, which sets up a fountain that heals party members nearby.
- Mystic Door, which sets up a door to the nearest town and back.
- Holy Magic Shell, which guards against up to 10 hits.
- Resurrection, which revives fallen party members.
- Holy Symbol, which increases the EXP given to the player and their party.
- Heal, which, as the name suggests, heals the player and their party members within range. Angel Ray, a main attacking skill in 4th job, also has this function.
- Dispel, which cancels out most Abnormal Statuses left on the player and their party members by enemies.
- Holy Fountain, which sets up a fountain that heals party members nearby.
- Mystic Door, which sets up a door to the nearest town and back.
- Holy Magic Shell, which guards against up to 10 hits.
- Resurrection, which revives fallen party members.
Their job specialty skill is Blessed Ensemble, which gives the player extra damage for each party buff given to party members, as well as extra EXP for each job of the Cleric branch in the party. Their hyper skill Righteously Indignant also converts Angel Ray from an efficient mobbing attack to a single-target devastator; toggle it on or off as the situation requires, but be aware that many abilities are locked when single-target mode is active. Their second job is Cleric, third job is Priest, and their fourth job is Bishop. "
- - Maplewiki on Bishops
Tropes associated with Clerics, Priests, and Bishops:
- Auto-Revive: Their hyper skill Heaven's Door both attacks a wide area for heavy damage, and then buffs the entire party with a buff that will automatically restore their HP to full if it would hit 0 one time, acting as an extra life.
- Barrier Warrior: Holy Magic Shell creates a barrier that blocks a set number of hits before dissipating
- Beam Spam / Holy Hand Grenade: Their ultimate skill, Genesis, bombards the area around the caster with many pillars of light.
- Critical Hit Class: Bishops have the highest base chance of getting a Critical Hit among all Adventurer classes, at 75%. A Bishop can deliver a critical hit every time if they are wearing equipment and using skills that make up the remaining 25%.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: Angelic Wrath inflics a defense debuff that applies to the player, while Angel Ray inflicts a damage boosting debuff that applies to the party.
- Gold and White Are Divine: After spending most of its time in the game as a red dragon, the Bishop's summon, Bahamut, received a huge visual overhaul in Destiny firmly placing it in this trope; as a pure white dragon with golden adornments and feathery angelic wings.
- Healing Hands: Apart from buff skills that increase the offensive and defensive thresholds of party members, Bishops have Heal and Resurrection, both skills being Exactly What It Says on the Tin, which makes them essential in big fights.
- Healing Shiv: Their primary bossing move, Angel Ray, throws swords of light to do heavy damage to enemies, but also heal any allies that it passes through on the way.
- Healing Spring: Holy Fountain creates a fountain of water that allows allies to heal themselves
- Portal Door: Mystic Door sets up a portal that allows themselves and allies to go to the nearest town. It's useful in that the portal also appears in town to take you back to where you were before.
- The Power of Friendship: They get stronger if there are more members in the party that they buffed through their class passive, Blessed Ensemble.
- Stance System: Righteously Indignant essentially acts as a stance for solo boss fights. When used all skills except Teleport and Angel Ray are disabled, however Angel Ray becomes significantly stronger while turning into a single target skill. This is is even reflected in their 5th job Angel of Balance summon. When Righteously Indignant is off it plays a passive role healing and buffing allies, when it is on it plays an active role attacking and debuffing enemies. The "Destiny" revamp reworks this skill into the entire class identity; Instead of locking the Bishop out of their supportive skills, the stance toggle will instead change their support skills into damaging skills.
- Revive Kills Zombie: Although the second job skill, Heal, is not the most effective way to do so, it can be used as a weapon against monsters weak to holy damage, such as ghosts and the undead.
- Useless Useful Spell: Resurrection slowly became one of these as the game became more focused on bossing. It became less and less likely that players would be partying in a situation where the ability to revive on the spot would prove useful, as most boss content adapted death counters, which count when the unit dies rather than when they respawn, so Resurrection doesn't do much that simply respawning manually would do anyway. Notably, the game auto kicks any player who runs out of lives, which doesn't let you use Ressurection on them, meaning there is no situation where the skill can be used as an extra life. There have been attempts to rectify this slightly, and now at the very least Resurrection grants the revived player brief invincibility they wouldn't get if they respawned. "Destiny" attempts to sweeten the pot even further by granting the revived ally up to 25% bonus damage that is only applied during boss encounters.
- White Mage: The Bishop is primarily a support class and the only reason why they are a welcome addition to any party is because of their buffs, not because they can destroy enemies easily. However, their high Critical Hit rate and offensive fourth job skills mean that they are not slouches in combat either.
Bowmen
Voiced by: Kim Eun-Ah (Korean, female), Park Seong-tae (Korean, male), Sarah Anne Williams (English, female), Sean Chiplock (English, male)
"Bowmen are what are called "range fighters" or a "DPS" class. "DPS" stands for "damage per second" and refers to the fact that Bowmen attack from long-range using weaponry that causes a great deal of damage. The trade-off Bowmen make for being able to deal great damage is that they need to be mobile and flexible. That's because they're not armored like Warriors and can't take as much damage before they die. Bowmen use bows and crossbows and can also use light swords axes,and blunt weapons."
- - Acorn Story: Playing a Bowman
As the non-magical ranged class of MapleStory, Bowmen specialize in dealing long range damage by raining arrows down upon their foes. Bowmen are probably one of the least popular classes in MapleStory, but one of the more powerful, (and frequently more friendly) classes in the game, especially after the Jump! patch. After job advancement, they can continue on as a Bowmaster, who uses bows, or a Marksman, who uses Crossbows.
It's worth noting that while they are referred to as Bowmen by various guides, the official site, and several NPC's, the first job advancement is actually know as an Archer. Bowman and Crossbowman refers to what weapon they use, dictating further job advancements.
Note: Please only place tropes here that apply to the Bowman class as a whole. Tropes specific to certain job advancements can go under that advancement's section.
Tropes associated with all Bowmen Classes:
- Annoying Arrows: Bowmen damage is absolutely piddling in early stages and without optimal equipment and buffs they will still deal less damage per hit compared to the average Warrior. However, the number of hits they can dish out per second is only rivaled by the Thieves and Corsairs amongst Explorers in the case of the Bowmaster and Marksmen avert this trope entirely with high damage piercing shots.
- The Artifact: Hurricane still looks the way it did years ago (for a while it got a flaming upgrade but it has since been removed) and mostly works in the same way as old school players would remember. It looks much more primitive and small compared to newer similar style attacks such as Ishtar's Ring. 100% true for Arrowbomb as aside from increased damage it still works exactly as it did when it debuted. It even still does one line of damage.
- The Berserker: They can invoke this even further by reducing their defense (Bowmaster) or avoidability (Marksman) to increase damage.
- Bottomless Magazines: They can use Soul Arrows to attack without consuming arrows.
- Bows Versus Crossbows: Bowmasters focus on More Dakka, while Marksmen focus on powerful single shots.
- Critical Hit Class: Bowmasters have the highest critical hit scaling in the game with a good base critical rate (around 55% with sharp eyes). Part of their skill curve is making all their hits critical as even a small amount of non critical hits hinder the damage potential they have.
- Double Jump: Not as useful as the Thieves' version, given that it propels them upwards more than it does forwards and Bowmen's movement speeds are permanently boosted by passive skills.
- Elemental Powers: Fire for Bowmasters, and ice for marksmen.
- Glass Cannon: Bowmen have serious survivability issues at higher levels. Somewhat mitigated with their current skills. It has also been mitigated by the fact bosses tend to do percentage damage nowadays compared to fixed damage.
- Grapplinghook Pistol: Arrow, in this case. Pulls you to the farthest enemy within range.
- Green Hill Zone: The area for the first job advancement.
- Magikarp Power:
- Pre revamp Archers were one of the most tedious classes that only in third job started rivaling their ranged counterpart in night lords with their Strafe compared to their Lucky Seven and Shadow Partner. Those who stuck with it were rewarded with the fastest attacking class in the game and didn't have to deal with ammo unlike their ranged thief competition that outclassed them before.
- Post revamp Bowmasters still have very lackluster attacking skills early on, though faster leveling does help immensely, but become a very well rounded class at the end that isn't bad at any one thing and is always competitive (if rarely the top) in terms of bossing.
- Mythology Gag: The RED illustration for the Bowman pictured is wearing the original Maplestory beta mouse cursor as a hairpin.
- Noble Bird of Prey: The Phoenix for Bowmasters, Frostprey for Marksmen and Shadow Raven for Pathfinder.
Hunters/Rangers/Bowmaster
Voiced by: Yukina Shuto (Japanese, female), Yosuke Omomo (Japanese, male)
"The Bowmaster job branch focuses on shooting arrows up close and afar. They specialize in Bows as primary weapons and Arrow Fletchings as secondary weapons. They have several skills to make use of their range, including Arrow Blaster, which fires arrows at a fast speed and can be installed. They also make use of Hurricane, which fires arrows like a storm at a single enemy.
They also make use of special arrows with their job specialty skill Quiver Cartridge, which alternates between 3 special arrows: Blood Arrow, which allows the player to recover HP when attacking; Poison Arrow, which deals damage over time to enemies; and Magic Arrow, which fires extra arrows at enemies when using normal attacks. This skill is upgraded in 4th job with Enchanted Quiver, which allows Bowmasters to keep using one type of arrow for a short period of time. Their second job is Hunter, their third job is Ranger, and their fourth job is Bowmaster. "
They also make use of special arrows with their job specialty skill Quiver Cartridge, which alternates between 3 special arrows: Blood Arrow, which allows the player to recover HP when attacking; Poison Arrow, which deals damage over time to enemies; and Magic Arrow, which fires extra arrows at enemies when using normal attacks. This skill is upgraded in 4th job with Enchanted Quiver, which allows Bowmasters to keep using one type of arrow for a short period of time. Their second job is Hunter, their third job is Ranger, and their fourth job is Bowmaster. "
- - Maple Wiki on Bowmasters
Tropes associated with Hunters, Rangers, and Bowmasters:
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Attacks have a chance to ignore 50% of the enemy's defense.
- Blow You Away: Gritty Gust
- Boring, but Practical: The general animations of Bowmaster's attacks isn't as flashly visually as many other classes. Their main skill, Hurricane, one time had a flaming version that was aquired at 4th job that looked pretty good compared to similar style attacks but they have since lost that visual and they now still use the same animation Hurricane used back when 4th job was added and it now looks much more primitive to others such as the Wind Archer and Mercedes equivalent. Still Bowmasters are no less capable than said classes and even out damages some of them.
- Kill It with Fire: Flame Surge and Phoenix in the 3rd job advancement. Hurricane at one time had a fire asthetic but it has since been removed.
- More Dakka: Hurricane and Arrow Blaster, Covering Fire to a lesser extent. Taken up a notch with 5th job skills.
- Player-Guided Missile: Arrow Blaster can be moved as its shoots.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Can attach bombs to arrows.
- Trick Arrow: Quiver Cartridge, their signature passive, allows them to switch between Blood Arrows, Poison Arrows, or Magic Arrows
- The Turret Master: You can set Arrow Blaster in one spot and attack normally.
Crossbowmen/Sniper/Marksmen
Voiced by: Misa Ishii (Japanese, female), Sohei Horikane (Japanese, male)
"The Marksman job branch specializes in Crossbows as primary weapons and Bow Thimbles as secondary weapons. Like the Bowmaster, Marksmen focus on firing arrows from afar, but with a bigger emphasis on firing from a distance, as most of their attacks are fired from a safe distance.
Their job specialty skill is Rangefinder, which gives a different effect based on the player's distance; when attacking up close, they will ignore more enemy defense; when attacking from afar, the player deals more damage. This is enhanced in 4th job with Bolt Surplus, which increases these effects, as well as increasing attack count for attacks that already hit more than once. When far away, they also ignore more enemy defense with Vital Hunter, and deal more damage to solitary enemies with Last Man Standing. Their main attacks in 4th job are Snipe, which deals a large amount of damage to a single enemy, but with a cooldown that can only be removed with a Hyper Skill, and Piercing Arrow, which deals 1.2 times the damage to each additional enemy hit. Their second job is Crossbowman, their third job is Sniper, and their fourth job is Marksman. "
Their job specialty skill is Rangefinder, which gives a different effect based on the player's distance; when attacking up close, they will ignore more enemy defense; when attacking from afar, the player deals more damage. This is enhanced in 4th job with Bolt Surplus, which increases these effects, as well as increasing attack count for attacks that already hit more than once. When far away, they also ignore more enemy defense with Vital Hunter, and deal more damage to solitary enemies with Last Man Standing. Their main attacks in 4th job are Snipe, which deals a large amount of damage to a single enemy, but with a cooldown that can only be removed with a Hyper Skill, and Piercing Arrow, which deals 1.2 times the damage to each additional enemy hit. Their second job is Crossbowman, their third job is Sniper, and their fourth job is Marksman. "
- - Maplewiki on Marksmen
Tropes associated with Crossbowmen, Snipers, and Marksmen:
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Besides having passive defense ignore, they can increase this by attacking from afar.
- Awesome, but Impractical: One of their distinctive features used to be Snipe delivering one massive line of damage. Impressive in the early days, it unfortunately easily run afoul of the damage cap, severely crippling Marksmen's damage potential once they hit it. Eventually changed to just do multiple lines of damage like most other skills in the game.
- Barrier Warrior: A minor version: they can turn their damage into a protective barrier thanks to Aggressive Resistance.
- Boring, but Practical: Their late game strategy when it comes to bossing is spamming Snipe until the boss dies, it's not as flashy as other classes but still gets the job done.
- Cold Sniper: Puns aside, their playstyle encourages this, especially with their specialized skill, Rangefinder, which does more damage the further an enemy is.
- An Ice Person: Their Noble Bird of Prey, Frostprey
- Inescapable Net: Net Toss: restrains enemies it hits or slow down bosses.
- Magnetism Manipulation: Arrow Illusion creates an illusion of an arrow on the ground which draws in enemies and allows the Marksman to reflect damage when hit
- One Hit Poly Kill: Piercing Shot, their best mobbing skill, gets stronger when it attacks more enemies. High Speed Shot takes this up a notch.
- Recursive Ammo: Their 5th job skill Split Shot enchants the arrows they fire to explode on impact to release a spread of arrows.
- Shock and Awe: Explosive Bolt, although only in appearance, as it's elementally neutral.
Pathfinder
Voiced by: So Yeon (Korean, cutscene only), Nana Mizuki (Japanese, female), Takuya Tsuda (Japanese, male)
The long awaited third branch of the explorer archers, Pathfinder was a student of Athena Pierce who found a cursed artifact in the Partem Ruins.
Tropes associated with Ancient Archers, Soul Chasers and Pathfinders:
- Artifact of Doom: The Relic appears to be this, but it turns out it's just an artifact of power with an evil curse placed on it. By making job advancements Pathfinder is able to remove the curse bit by bit and access the Relic's true power.
- Bottomless Magazines: Pathfinder doesn't need ammo at all thanks to the curse.
- Casting a Shadow: All of Pathfinder's skills use a very dark purple.
- Cursed with Awesome: While the Relic does threaten her life, it also grants Pathfinder unique skills and abilities and by mastering those abilities she is able to subdue the curse and purify the relic.
- Discard and Draw: Starts off as an Archer with a regular bow but the Relic's curse quickly replaces whatever regular Bowman skills she once had.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: The debilitating effects of the curse on the Relic are expressed in game by a stat penalty passive. Overcoming the curse is similarly expressed in slowly negating parts of the debuff until the pentaly is entirely removed by 4th job.
- Retractable Weapon: Pathfinder's weapon is the Ancient Bow, which looks more like a double sided dagger in its default form, but can expand into an energy bow.
- Stance System: Using Cardinal Burst, Deluge or Torrent will set the Relic into one of three modes, certain 4th and 5th job skills Pathfinder can use will have different properties depending on which three modes the Relic is currently in.
Thieves
Voiced by: Lee Ho-san (Korean, male), Lee So-eun (Korean, female), Tony Azzolino (English, male), Xanthe Huynh (English, female)
"Good Thief players understand their class very well and are comfortable moving around a lot. It's not an easy class to play, but when played well, Thieves are tremendous fun and a great asset to an adventuring party. Many Thieves wouldn't play any other class."
- - Acorn Story: Playing a Thief
Thieves are probably the most varied class in MapleStory, due to their separation at the very first job advancement. Those who advance to an Assassin will use Lucky Seven, while those hoping to become Bandits will put points into Double Stab. Assassins and Bandits vary right from the start, as opposed to Bowmen, who are pretty similar until the Fourth Job Advancement. From the start, Thieves are a powerful class that excels in defeating their adversaries quickly and quietly.
Like Bowmen/Archers. Their first job is referred to as a Rogue. Most people call them thieves for convenience, or to avoid confusion.
Note: Please only place tropes here that apply to the Thief class as a whole. Tropes specific to certain job advancements can go under that advancement's section.
Tropes associated with all Thief Classes:
- Damage Over Time: Venom and Toxic Venom are passives that make attacks inflict poison by chance.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Their damage output is fantastic, but you need to get used to their limited attacking range and inability to take many hits first.
- Doppelgänger Attack: Shadow Partner.
- Double Jump: Despite being Fragile Speedsters, most thieves do not have a very high movement speed or jump, so this First Job skill more than makes up for that by propelling them forwards at a good speed as well as upwards by a significant height.
- Fragile Speedster: Highest avoidability out of all Adventurer classes, but has substandard HP and defenses. Subverted by Bandits with their Meso Guard skill.
- Ninja Log: Night Lords and Shadowers get Shadow Shifter, which has a chance to summon a decoy in place of yourself when attacked
- Rain Of Arrows: Showdown, a fourth job skill. Summons Assist Characters that fire a rain of fiery arrows hitting every monster on the screen.
- Power Creep: Once a defining characteristic of thieves, Double Jump is slowly becoming a standard now, with most new job releases since the Legends update came with a Double Jump skill in their first job, and the RED update giving an equivalent skill to most of the other Adventurer classes. Though Thieves do get a Triple Jump to make up for it.
- Useless Useful Stealth: While Dark Sight is definitely helpful for navigating maps without getting hit by contact damage, it doesn't protect against actual attacks, which makes it useless against bosses. Even some normal enemies automatically attack you on sight, which is the norm in higher levels. On the other hand, Shadowers and Dual Blades can activate it automatically during attacks and gain a power boost upon leaving it, making it a zig-zagged trope. Like a few other mechanics known for being somewhat useless, it's been given somewhat of a buff in recent patches and can now avoid significantly more useful things in exchange for a cooldown that is dependent on how much damage was avoided this way.
Assassins/Hermits/Night Lords
Voiced by: Shun'ichi Toki (Japanese, male), Tomomi Tanaka (Japanese, female)
"The Night Lord job branch is centered around using Throwing Stars alongside their primary weapon, Claws, and Charms as secondary weapons. They throw stars at enemies from afar to deal damage, with a new single-target attack in later job advancements. They have several attacks for dealing with multiple enemies, including Shuriken Burst, which tosses a flaming star at enemies, Gust Charm, which pushes enemies back, Shade Splitter, which uses 3 stars and has shadows attack enemies in front of the player, and Showdown, which deals significant damage and raises EXP and drop rate gained from enemies attacked. In 3rd job, they gain a skill called Shadow Partner, which mimics the player's attacks, using extra stars but dealing extra damage at a reduced rate. Their job specialty skill is Assassin's Mark, which launches randomly flying stars around to damage enemies while attacking. This skill is upgraded in 4th job with Night Lord's Mark, making it stronger. Their second job is Assassin, their third job is Hermit, and their fourth job is Night Lord."
- - Maplewiki on Night Lords
Tropes associated with Assassins, Hermits, and Night Lords:
- Abnormal Ammo: You can throw oranges, paper planes, wooden tops and icicles. This is not including Cash Shop items or Event items.
- Blow You Away: Gust Charm, a second job skill, which inexplicably uses two throwing stars to summon a wind charm that knocks enemies back.
- Bottomless Magazines: Can consume a small amount of stars to temporarily have unlimited stars with Shadow Stars.
- Curse: Frailty Curse summons a barrier of charms around you, which decreases the damage, defense, and movement speed of enemies caught within.
- Doppelgänger Attack: While all explorer thieves get Shadow Clone, Night Lords get Shade Splitter, which sends out shadow clones to rain stars down.
- Double Jump: Shadow Web acts as an additional jump, giving the Night Lord up to 4 jumps if used properly.
- Fuuma Shuriken: Dark Flare, which reflects damage; Death Star, which rains smaller shurikens surrounding the Night Lord; and Shurrikane, which throws out a massive shuriken that stays in place, damaging enemies repeatedly.
- Glass Cannon: Especially after 5th job, they're actually able to outpace their bossing specialist cousins the Night Walkers in terms of their burst damage potential, but without much in terms of a defensive vocabulary, surviving until the next burst is ready can be tricky.
- Having a Blast: Another second job skill, Shuriken Burst, throws an exploding knife that damages everything around it on impact.
- I Shall Taunt You: Their Showdown skill "taunts" enemies, which makes them give more EXP and increases their item drop rate.
- More Dakka: Assassin's Mark, their signature passive, marks a target. The next attack that hits the target sends out more throwing stars to attack nearby enemies. Their 5th Job skill, Spread Throw, allows them to throw even more stars alongside their regular throwing star attacks.
- Poisoned Weapons: Par for the course for all adventurer thieves, Night Lords take this a step further with Bleed Dart, which adds an additional Damage Over Time effect on all attacks for it's duration.
- Pistol-Whipping: Enemies are punched with the claw when they are too close, as opposed to throwing stars at point-blank range. This only applies to basic attacks, however, although it also applied to skills before Big Bang. The punch was also significantly weaker before Big Bang, often doing only 1 HP damage.
Bandits/Chief Bandits/Shadowers
Voiced by: Tomomi Tanaka (Japanese, female), Ryosuke Kanemoto (Japanese, male)
"The Shadower job branch, unlike Night Lords, uses Daggers as their primary weapon, and Dagger Scabbards or Shields as secondary weapons. Instead of attacking from afar, Shadowers focus on fighting monsters up close. They have a variety of attacks for fighting multiple mobs, including Savage Blow, Phase Dash, and Boomerang Stab, as well as a few attacks for one-on-one combat, including Midnight Carnival and Assassinate. In 3rd job, they gain a skill called Shadow Partner, which mimics the player's attacks, dealing extra damage at a reduced rate. In 4th job, they gain a buff called Shadower Instinct, which increases their attack as well as giving a new method of gaining damage called Body Count; this system allows the player to deal extra damage with Assassinate as well as give the player additional attack power when their Body Count is full and the buff is used.
Their Hyper Skill Flip of the Coin allows them to significantly increase their damage and damage cap by up to an additional 10,000,000 for each stack (stacks up to 5 times), giving them the highest damage cap potential of any job. Their job specialty skill is Critical Growth, which increases their Critical Rate every few seconds and while attacking, resetting every time it reaches 100%. This skill is upgraded in 4th job with Prime Critical, increasing the Critical Rate even further. Their second job is Bandit, their third job is Chief Bandit, and their fourth job is Shadower. "
Their Hyper Skill Flip of the Coin allows them to significantly increase their damage and damage cap by up to an additional 10,000,000 for each stack (stacks up to 5 times), giving them the highest damage cap potential of any job. Their job specialty skill is Critical Growth, which increases their Critical Rate every few seconds and while attacking, resetting every time it reaches 100%. This skill is upgraded in 4th job with Prime Critical, increasing the Critical Rate even further. Their second job is Bandit, their third job is Chief Bandit, and their fourth job is Shadower. "
- - Maplewiki on Shadowers
Tropes associated with Bandits, Chief Bandits, and Shadowers:
- Back Stab: Assassinate works like this in spirit: if it's used while in Dark Sight, it will deal extra damage.
- Cast from Money: The original version of Meso Explosion used to detonate actual mesos to do damage, which could deal massive damage as long as the player was willing drop a huge amount of mesos to set off. The revampped version uses its own fake mesos but Shadowers can still cast from money in a sense with Meso Guard, which absorbs damage at the cost of mesos.
- Charge Attack: Can accumulate a "Body Count" through Shadower Instinct, which can be used to power up Assassinate.
- Critical Hit Class: Their signature passive, Critical Growth, increases their critical hit rate between every interval and attack, resetting after attacking when capped at 100%. Flip of the Coin, takes this a step further, increases their damage and base critical chance every time it's used (which can only be after landing a critical hit)
- Death of a Thousand Cuts / Spam Attack
- Doppelgänger Attack: Shadow Veil summons a group of shadows to continuously hound over and attack a large area.
- Flash Step: Boomerang Step is a variation, when used they quickly dash back and forth to slice through enemies with a brief window of invulnerability. In addition, Into Darkness allows them to teleport behind an enemy while simultaneously entering Dark Sight
- Glass Cannon: As of Reboot, they deal significantly greater damage than before, but also have much weaker defenses.
- In Name Only: The Khanjar thief "shields" are actually daggers.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Although their Shield Mastery isn't as potent as a Paladin's.
- Mana Shield: Except it uses money.
- Smoke Out:Smoke Screen can be used as a barrier, pretty much, but it can also be used rebuff or heal.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Bandits can turn money into bombs. Don't ask how that works.
- Video Game Stealing: Notably the only one of the three branches of thieves that can actually steal. Aware that the ability to take something out of a mob's drop table is highly underwhelming in a modern environment, it has been reworked to make enemies drop special potions that immediately heal and if it came from a boss, buff attack.
Dual Blades
Voiced by: Yohei Matsuoka (Japanese, male), Tomoyo Takayanagi (Japanese, female)
"The Dual Blade job, unlike other Thieves, has their own tutorial, where they start in The Secret Garden. Using Daggers as primary weapons and Kataras as secondary weapons, Dual Blades utilize fast attacks, some of which can be chained together.
Dual Blades, unlike other Explorer Thieves, do not gain a job specialty skill in 2nd job, but have other abilities to make up for it. For example, Dual Blades have Shadow Meld, a buff that gives 100% critical when the player dodges attacks, as well as Final Cut, a damage buff that increases final damage temporarily. In 3rd job, they gain a skill called Mirror Image, which mimics the player's attacks, dealing extra damage at a reduced rate. This skill is also required for Mirrored Target, which allows the player to place a dummy to lure enemies away from the player, as well as activate Shadow Meld whenever it gets hit. Unlike other jobs, they have six job advancements instead of four. Their first job+ is Blade Recruit, their second job is Blade Acolyte, their second job+ is Blade Specialist, their third job is Blade Lord, and their fourth job is Blade Master. "
Dual Blades, unlike other Explorer Thieves, do not gain a job specialty skill in 2nd job, but have other abilities to make up for it. For example, Dual Blades have Shadow Meld, a buff that gives 100% critical when the player dodges attacks, as well as Final Cut, a damage buff that increases final damage temporarily. In 3rd job, they gain a skill called Mirror Image, which mimics the player's attacks, dealing extra damage at a reduced rate. This skill is also required for Mirrored Target, which allows the player to place a dummy to lure enemies away from the player, as well as activate Shadow Meld whenever it gets hit. Unlike other jobs, they have six job advancements instead of four. Their first job+ is Blade Recruit, their second job is Blade Acolyte, their second job+ is Blade Specialist, their third job is Blade Lord, and their fourth job is Blade Master. "
- - Maplewiki on the Dual Blade
Wondering why they get their picture up here unlike the other Job Advancements? Well, Dual Blades are a special Adventurer class that has their own little backstory, a more diverse set of skills, more power, all the individual things that made the first Thief classes good, and were generally considered to be a Game-Breaker prior to their nerfs.
Tropes associated with Dual Blades, Blade Recruits, Blade Acolytes, Blade Specialists, Blade Lords, and Blade Masters:
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Phantom Blow ignores a portion of its target's armor when attacking
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: To realize the full potential of a Dual Blade, real money must be shelled out to pay for Skill Books. Thankfully, the RED Update allows one to simply buy the Skill Books using ingame currency.
- Cast from Hit Points: Final Cut
- Chain Pain: Chains of Hell, which provides invulnerability during the attack
- Combos: Many of their skills can be linked with one another
- Death of a Thousand Cuts / Spam Attack: Moreso than their bandit brethren.
- Doppelgänger Spin: Downplayed, Mirrored Target creates a clone of yourself at your position to draw in nearby enemies
- Dual Wielding: The Dual Blade's primary weapon is a dagger. The secondary weapon is a katara, which is also a dagger but not considered as one in the game.
- Life Drain: A passive of theirs
- Immune to Flinching: Thorns passively increases the Dual Blade's damage and stance rate.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: They have extra half job advancements, which gives them 7 overall job advancements instead of 5, which due to Evan's 10 job advancements being standardized to 5, makes them stand out as the only class that has more job advancements than normal.
- Spin Attack: Tornado Spin, Slash Storm, Flying Assaulter, Bloody Storm, and Blade Fury are all attacks that involve rapid spinning
- Temporary Blindness: Invoked with Flashbang, although it functions more as a Damage-Increasing Debuff
Pirates
Voiced by: Park Seong-tae (Korean, male), Kim Eun-Ah (Korean, female), Lucien Dodge (English, male), Sarah Anne Williams (English, female)
"The Pirate is one of the most interesting classes in MapleStory. Depending on how the player chooses to advance them, Pirates can become Brawlers, powerful melee fighters that do great damage to monsters when in close. They may also choose to become Gunslingers and become ranged attackers. The interesting aspect of both types of Pirates is that they have a wide variety of attacks and abilities. As a result, it takes some effort to play a pirate well, but you can never be bored while being one!"
- - Acorn Story: Playing a Pirate
Meet the Thief Mk. II. Pirates were released several years after the original four adventurer classes, and as such, many players made a Pirate when they first came out. This holds true whenever a new class is released and has become for Nexon a sort of a Bandwagon Technique, getting new players to play whenever a new class comes out. Like Thieves, when Pirates reach the job advancement, they can take on a ranged or melee role in the party, wielding guns (ranged) or knuckles (melee).
Note: Please only place tropes here that apply to the Pirate class as a whole. Tropes specific to certain job advancements can go under that advancement's section.
Tropes associated with all Pirate Classes:
- Double Jump: Octopush for Buccaneers and Corsairs, Monkey Push for Cannoneers
- The Gambler: They gain the Roll of the Dice skill, which gives them a random buff depending on which number they roll (unless it's 1...) In the 4th job, you can roll TWO dice for more buffs. Hyper Skills can add the chance to roll 7 And 5th job takes it a step further by giving them a third loaded die to use, which lets them roll whatever number they want in addition to the other two.
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: The original official artworks and release trailer
for the Pirate class depict a male Brawler and female Gunslinger. All subsequent official art for the Pirate class (as well as trailers for game updates) shows either the female Gunslinger or the Pirate Job Instructor, Kyrin, holding guns. - Hyperspace Arsenal: Pirates start out with more Equip, Use and Etc. space than other Adventurer classes thanks to their Master of Organization passive skill.
- Irony: While Thunder Breakers use water in their attacks, regular adventurer pirates do not use water yet swim better than they do.
- Super Swimming Skills: Pirates can move faster underwater than other Adventurer classes thanks to their Master of Swimming passive skill.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: As a class, they are just adventurers. This is lampshaded by Kyrin, during the first job advancement, who claims that serving the greater good is more profitable than pillaging.
- Submarine Pirates: Their "city" is a massive submarine called the Nautilus.
Brawlers/Marauder/Buccaneer
Also known as Brawlers/Buccaneers/Vipers
Voiced by: Ryuichi Kijima (Japanese, male), Aimi Terakawa (Japanese, female)
The Buccaneer job branch is centered around punching enemies up close, as well as using specific ranged attacks from afar. They specialize in Knuckles as primary weapons, and Wrist Bands as secondary weapons. Their job specialty skill is Energy Charge, which increases their speed and defense, as well as allowing for attacks to be used without consuming MP, consuming energy instead. Later on, it increases Attack Power when enhanced with Supercharge in 3rd job, which is further enhanced with Ultra Charge. While in Energy Charge mode, certain attacks, such as Static Thumper, will simply gain extra damage, while other attacks will be enhanced with additional effects and different aesthetics, such as Octopunch, which gains 2 extra attacks in Energy Charge mode. The attacks Dragon Strike (4th job) and Power Unity (Level 170 Hyper Skill) will also be unlocked, allowing for you to cast a debuff on enemies to extra final damage on them and gain extra critical damage, respectively.
Buccaneers also gain access to Roll of the Dice in 3rd job, which gives a random buff for a short period of time (Defense, Max HP, Critical Rate, Damage, EXP, and Enemy Defense Ignored if you unlock Double Down - Addition, which is later enhanced in 4th job as Double Down, which gives a chance to cast 2 dice at once, enhancing the effects if you get 2 of the same die. Like all other Explorer pirates, Buccaneers gain access to Nautilus Strike in 4th job. Their version of Nautilus Strike allows them to deal extra damage on enemies (a la Final Attack) when using Sommersault Kick, Corkscrew Blow, Spiral Assault, or Octopunch for 40 seconds after activating it. Their second job is Brawler (Infighter in other versions), their third job is Marauder (Buccaneer in other versions), and their fourth job is Buccaneer (Viper in other versions).
Buccaneers also gain access to Roll of the Dice in 3rd job, which gives a random buff for a short period of time (Defense, Max HP, Critical Rate, Damage, EXP, and Enemy Defense Ignored if you unlock Double Down - Addition, which is later enhanced in 4th job as Double Down, which gives a chance to cast 2 dice at once, enhancing the effects if you get 2 of the same die. Like all other Explorer pirates, Buccaneers gain access to Nautilus Strike in 4th job. Their version of Nautilus Strike allows them to deal extra damage on enemies (a la Final Attack) when using Sommersault Kick, Corkscrew Blow, Spiral Assault, or Octopunch for 40 seconds after activating it. Their second job is Brawler (Infighter in other versions), their third job is Marauder (Buccaneer in other versions), and their fourth job is Buccaneer (Viper in other versions).
- - Maplewiki on Buccaneers
Tropes associated with Brawlers, Marauders, and Buccaneers:
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Has a chance to completely ignore the monsters' defense.
- Bare-Fisted Monk
- Battle Aura: When fully charged they emit a glowing aura in the shape of a Maple Leaf
- Charged Attack: Energy Charge changes increases the damage and/or range of of some of their attacks after being fully charged.
- Healing Factor: Perseverance regularly recovers a fraction of your max HP and MP every few seconds
- Immune to Flinching: HP Boost both increases their max HP and passively provides them stance
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Can easily stun enemies, and they have passives which increase damage against stunned enemies. Even bosses!
- Pure Energy: Could become it prior to Renegades. The 5th job advancement brings this back as a Super Mode.
- Time Master: Their Time Leap skill resets the cool down for all non-Time Leap skills, for the entire party.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Buccaneers/Vipers get a skill like this in the Justice update.
Gunslingers/Outlaw/Corsair
Voiced by: Maaya Uchida (Japanese, female), Shou Karino (Japanese, male)
"The Corsair job branch, unlike Buccaneers, focuses on shooting Bullets at enemies from afar, specializing in Guns as primary weapons, and Far Sights as secondary weapons. Their job specialty skill is Scurvy Summons, which summons one out of three crew members from the Nautilus to aid them in their attacks. This skill is enhanced with All Aboard in 3rd job, increasing the damage of the crew members, as well as adding a fourth one, and giving them the ability to protect you from statuses once. In 4th job, this skill is enhanced with Ahoy Mateys, which increases your Attack Power when crew members are summoned, as well as giving specific effects based on the crew members summoned. They also gain the ability to summon additional crew members with Broadside (KMS only), which places a random crew member in a Battleship to launch shells at enemies, as well as an Octo-Cannon, an octopus sitting on a gatling cannon that fires quick shots at enemies. Corsair gains access to various attacks, such as Rapid Fire, which fires multiple shots a second at a single enemy. They also gain access to Parrotargetting, which allows you to focus your attacks on a specific marked enemy. The skill Quickdraw is also unlocked in 4th job, which, when the effect is activated, can be used to increase the damage of your next attack, which would typically be Brain Scrambler or Ugly Bomb, which both deal a large amount of damage, with short cooldowns.
Corsair also gain access to Roll of the Dice in 3rd job, which gives a random buff for a short period of time (Defense, Max HP, Critical Rate, Damage, EXP, and Enemy Defense Ignored if you unlock Double Down - Addition, which is later enhanced in 4th job as Double Down, which gives a chance to cast 2 dice at once, enhancing the effects if you get 2 of the same die. Like all other Explorer pirates, Corsairs gain access to Nautilus Strike in 4th job. Their version of Nautilus Strike decreases the cooldown of Scurvy Summons and Roll of the Dice, as well as allows them to deal extra damage with Majestic Presence while on cooldown. Their second job is Gunslinger, their third job is Outlaw (Valkyrie in other versions), and their fourth job is Corsair (Captain in other versions). "
Corsair also gain access to Roll of the Dice in 3rd job, which gives a random buff for a short period of time (Defense, Max HP, Critical Rate, Damage, EXP, and Enemy Defense Ignored if you unlock Double Down - Addition, which is later enhanced in 4th job as Double Down, which gives a chance to cast 2 dice at once, enhancing the effects if you get 2 of the same die. Like all other Explorer pirates, Corsairs gain access to Nautilus Strike in 4th job. Their version of Nautilus Strike decreases the cooldown of Scurvy Summons and Roll of the Dice, as well as allows them to deal extra damage with Majestic Presence while on cooldown. Their second job is Gunslinger, their third job is Outlaw (Valkyrie in other versions), and their fourth job is Corsair (Captain in other versions). "
- - Maplewiki on Corsairs
Tropes associated with Gunslingers, Outlaws, and Corsairs:
- Assist Character: Eventually learns skills that summon things such as fish, octopi and parrots to help. Their specialized skill, Scurvy Summons, summons members of the Nautilus Crew for help.
- Big Ball of Violence: During Bullet Party, they fire so wildly and rapidly in every direction that they kick up a dust cloud. Any enemy that gets caught in it (or anywhere near it, really) will take heavy damage.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: Parrotargetting.
- Fantastic Nuke: Ugly Bomb, one of their attack Hyper Skills. Creates the signature mushroom cloud upon exploding and does immense damage to 15 enemies within range. The mushroom cloud is also visible in the background of the skill icon. Like the N2 Mine from Neon Genesis Evangelion, however, there's no lingering Damage Over Time after the blast.
- Glass Cannon: They can dish out INSANE amounts of damage at high levels. Their ability to take damage, however, is rather lacking.
- The Gunslinger
- Macho Masochism: Jolly Roger, a fourth job skill, lets them do more damage and resist some status ailments, but reduces avoidability.As a pirate who does not fear death, you shouldn’t bother with dodging attacks as often.
- More Dakka: Rapid Fire.
- Not Quite Flight: Wings let you jump up high then glide, allowing you to quickly descend over great distances.
- Nuke 'em: Ugly Bomb
- Recoil Boost: Recoil Shot. Acted as a pseudo-Double Jump until all pirates got a proper one.
- Rocket Jump: A variation with bullets rather than explosives in the aforementioned Wings example.
Cannon Shooters/Cannoneer
Voiced by: Chiharu Sawashiro (Japanese, male), Misano Sakai (Japanese, female)
"The Cannoneer job branch, unlike other Pirates, has its own tutorial, where it starts on Coco Island, as well as its own 1st job skills. Using Hand Cannons as primary weapons and Powder Kegs as secondary weapons, Cannoneers have slow but strong attacks, which revolve around firing cannonballs, while not using any type of ammunition such as Bullets. They also gain access to Monkey Magic, a party buff which increases HP, MP, Speed, Jump, and All Stats, as well as Monkey Fury, a skill that fires a cannonball that debuffs enemies and increases damage taken to them. Cannoneers, unlike other Explorer Pirates, do not gain a job specialty skill in 2nd job. They also gain access to Buckshot as a Level 150 Hyper, which triples their attack count, while reducing their damage to 45% (does not apply to summon skills). Their second job is Cannoneer, their third job is Cannon Trooper, and their fourth job is Cannon Master. "
- Maplewiki on the Cannoneer
The Cannoneernote is a Pirate class released during the Legends update and has a unique (but short) backstory, similar to the Demon and the Legends. The Cannoneer was originally a Beginner travelling to Maple World to undergo the same process as other Adventurers. En route, however, the ship the Cannoneer was travelling on was attacked by a Jr. Balrog and he was knocked out and sent flying into the water. When the Cannoneer wakes up, he finds himself on an island with a monkey screaming in his face. With some helpful head-nodding and shaking from the monkey, the Cannoneer deduces that the monkey saved his life and brought him here. Thanking the monkey and leaving it on the beach, the Cannoneer travels inland and meets a man named Cutter. As it turns out, Cutter is the Pirates' weapons designer. He became stranded on the same island after he wrecked his ship while test-firing a secret weapon he intended to deliver to the Pirate Job Instructor, Kyrin. With the Cannoneer's help, Cutter manages to retrieve the materials he needs to use his weapon as a mass driver to shoot the both of them back to civilization.
When the Cannoneer wakes up in the medical ward of the Nautilus, Cutter explains that the monkey they met on the beach stowed away on their cannon ride and followed them aboard. Cutter thinks that the monkey is attached to the Cannoneer and suggests that they explore Maple World as a team. He also gives the Cannoneer his original weapon, reworked to a portable size, and recommends that they join the Pirates as a unique Adventurer class, which the Cannoneer accepts.
In a similar vein to Evan, the Cannoneer has a monkey following him everywhere and helps him attack enemies. The Cannoneer uses a hand cannon, a BFG that can deliver massive damage against single targets or moderate damage to a group of targets. Additional skills include party buffs as well as mobility skills such as a Rocket Jump, mitigating the class' slowness and lack of mobility to some extent.
Tropes associated with Cannon Shooters:
- Abnormal Ammo: Your cannon is apparently compatible with drills, punching gloves, and lasers among other things...
- BFG: Biggest in the game with his only rival being Xenon's 4th Job skill Mecha Purge.
- Counter-Attack: Has a chance to block & smack enemies with the cannon.
- Damage Over Time: Monkey Furious shoots a large cannon ball from a cannon, also inflicting a Damage-Increasing Debuff that only boosts your own damage.
- Everything's Better with Rainbows: Rolling Cannon Rainbow as a room clearing Hyper Skill.
- Hollywood Magnetism: Anchors Aweigh (Away), a fourth job skill, sets up an anchor that pulls enemies towards it, within a certain range, using electricity.
- Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball: After their revamp, the Cannoneer's new skill Monkey Fury works like this, despite the fact that you're still shooting cannonballs!
- Mighty Glacier: Terrible horizontal movement compared to the other Pirate classes (Corsair has Wings, Buccaneer has his movement speed buffs from Energy Charge and Rush, Angelic Buster has a triple jump, and Xenon has outright flight) and has a slower attack rate than almost every class in the game. But they land big numbers and are much better at taking hits than the average Pirate.
- Musical Assassin: Monkey Wave has the cannoneer smack a large drum to unleash a sound wave attack.
- Recoil Boost: Blast Back. Acted as a pseudo-Double Jump until all pirates got a proper one.
- Rocket Jump: Cannon Jump, a third job skill, is this.
- Sticks to the Back: The hand cannon is so large it is stuck to the back at all times unless it is actually being used. Astute players can notice that most cannons have a strap that can be seen along the player's shoulder holding the cannon to their back.
- This Is a Drill: Cannon Spike makes you shoot a rocket-propelled drill. From your cannon.
- Throw a Barrel at It: Barrel Bomb, an exploding variant.
- True Companions: During their 5th job advancement quest, they can tell the Goddess of the Maple World that their monkey is the one they care about more than anyone else (the other option being whoever their true love is.)
Cygnus Knights
In General
Cygnus Knights
Also known as the Knights of Cygnus
As a whole, the Cygnus Knights were elemental versions of the five base Explorer classes, each one using a specific element. They originally had a level cap of 120 as opposed to 250note like the other classes, but from a purely statistical standpoint they overpowered other characters of the same level (Cygnus Knights received 6 AP per level up until 70 as opposed to 5 AP for other classes).They are named after and follow the eponymous young Empress of Ereve, perhaps even against their better judgement.
The Cygnus Knights are overhauled in the Cygnus Returns update, starting with the Thunder Breakers before moving on to the other classes. They can now reach the same level cap as the other classes and gain a fourth job, but lose their AP advantage as well as the ability to create a Cygnus-enhanced level 50 Adventurer using a completed Cygnus Knight. The Ignition update gave all Cygnus Knights another large scale revamp, albeit mostly to aesthetics.
- The Artifact: A rather interesting example in retrospect. It can be considered any Cygnus Knight that was used to create an Ultimate Explorer also gave them an attack that the Knight now can't use, such as Wind Piercing.
- Badass Army: Regarded as the single most powerful fighting force in Maple World short of the Legends, they took over in one bad future where the Black Mage corrupted Cygnus and her knights. There's a reason all of the Chief Knights are boss level opponents.
- Crutch Character: This was their original design conceit; they leveled up faster and got more stat points per level up, but they had a lower overall level cap. While the revamp removes much of this, they still have nods to being good classes for beginners, such as a very strong beginner skillset including a double jump, a passive buff to all units that levels up faster than other classes and no need for mastery books to level up 4th job skills, but now these benefits don't come at the price of being attached to a strictly worse unit overall.
- Declaration of Protection: They make this in their 5th job advancement quest to the Goddess of the Maple World, either to protect Empress Cygnus or the Chief Knight who trained them.
- Divergent Character Evolution: The original Cygnus Knights were more or less Explorer classes with elemental-themed attacks and only a few of their own unique skills to them. The Cygnus Returns update revamps them into completely original classes.
- Double Jump: All of them get this as a baseline skill. Unique from other classes, it can be used to double jump straight up in addition to forward.
- Fantastic Racism: Due to their absence in the Black Wings attack on Edelstein, they are loathed by the Resistance (They do explain why they couldn't show up, though.). It's relatively one-sided since Cygnus is a Nice Girl, and it's gone by the time the Alliance is born.
- Gratuitous Latin: The Cygnus Knight's guardian spirits are all named in Latin based on their element with the sole exception of Thunder Breaker (whose spirit is simply called Lightning):
- Light: Sol means sun.
- Fire: Ignis means fire.
- Wind: Ventus means wind.
- Darkness: Umbra means night.
- Color-Coded Elements: Especially after the revamp, giving almost all skills of a class the same color, with the "Ignition" revamp going a step further to eliminate most of the color outliers some classes had.
- Light - Yellow (But orange for Sun stance, blue for moon stance and purple for cosmos)
- Fire - Red
- Wind - Green (With purple for some skills)
- Lightning - Blue
- Dark - Purple
- My Master, Right or Wrong
- New Game Plus: The original Cygnus Knight class allowed the player to create a level 50 Adventurer class imbued with buffs from the Empress once they reach the level cap of 120. This was removed in the Cygnus Returns update.
- Fairy Companion: Every Cygnus Knight gets a Guardian Fairy that's correspondent with their element. They used to be summons, but the revamps have downgraded them into buffs.
- Irony: Cygnus Knights initially were stronger (at the same level) versions of their explorer counterparts, but now they either don't resemble who they were based on at all and even some are clearly weaker than their closest explorer branch.
- Suddenly Voiced: The Ignition update gave all Cygnus Knight classes voice lines when using their skills, similar to most modern classes and much like how the Explorers got voices in Destiny.
- Took a Level in Badass: As of the Cygnus Returns update, the Cygnus Knights are now being empowered by Cygnus's new powers. Thus, not only can they reach the level cap, but they can now match up to the rest of the classes.
Dawn Warriors
Dawn Warrior
Also known as Soul Master
Voiced by: Lee Sae-ah (Korean, female), Jung Ju-won (Korean, male), Laura Post (English, female), Griffin Burns (English, male), Natsumi Takamori (Japanese, female), Ayato Morinaga (Japanese, male)
Dawn Warriors were, at the very core, Paladins. They had an even greater fixation on the light and the holy element. Most of their skills, like other Cygnus Knights, were carbon copies of Adventurer skills, but they had some unique skills, notably the summoning of the Spirit of Light, Soul Runner and, most famously, the game-breaking Soul Driver. They were considered to be one of the most powerful Cygnus Knights, and were one of the most popular, even after Soul Driver's Nerf.
In the Cygnus Returns update, they received a major rework, using new buffs that allow them to attack with the power of the moon, the sun, or both, changing their attacks depending on which one they're using. They received one of the biggest overhauls of the Ignition update, now also being able to harness the power of outer space by changing back and forth between Sun and Moon.
Tropes associated with Dawn Warriors:
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Constantly having Equinox Cycle activated and spamming attacks will maim enemies extremely quickly, but absolutely tear through the Dawn Warrior's minimal MP. This gets especially noticeable when all skills are maxed out, as a good amount of them will cost an average of 100 points per use from a character that likely has less then 2500 at best.
- The Equinox Cycle bossing move looks cool as the Moon Dancer/Speeding Sunset combination has the player shoot a whirl of blades, launch into the air with a rising slash, shoot a whirl of blades downward, then use a falling slash to repeat the cycle, but it effectively locks the player into place where mobility is important, and also is prone to not working quite right when suffering lag. The former drawback was eventually addressed with the addition of Equinox Slash, which lets a player cancel out of their combo midair and dash forward and the later drawback was adressed in Ignition with a new much simpler attacking skill cycle, but latency is still an issue, and can make or break a Dawn Warrior to a degree unmatched by any other class.
- Blade Spam: Many of their later Moon Stance skills deal a great number of hits, with their Crescent Divide and Solar Pierce dealing twelve hits per use after a point in Master of the Sword!
- Boring, but Practical: The Ignition revamp removes all their various stance attacks and simply gives them a single evovling skill used in all four jobs for both mobbing and bossing, which gives them more consistency when combined with them being granted access to Equinox Cycle much earlier.
- BFS: They can use two handed sword or one handed swords, meanwhile Styx Crossing attacks a massive sword of light.
- Charged Attack: Styx Crossing is a large slash attack that deals more damage the longer it is charged. 5th job can temporarily turn it into a collect style attack istead; the cooldown is removed but the power of the attack is weakened. Instead the blade cuts a fissure into the underworld. Continually hacking at it will cut it open more and more until it explodes for massive damage.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: In spirit, this is the Moon Stance's specialty; moves do more lines of damage, but less damgage over all. While it starts at 2 more lines of damage at 50% power it gets a signifigant upgrade in 4th job ending in double the lines of damage at 90% power.
- Death from Above: Sunset Splitter brings down a Dawn Warrior's sword down on the opponent after a jump or after using Speeding Sunset. Impaling Rays causes swords of light to crash down from above.
- Duality Motif: The sun and the moon, with each pair of stance skills doing the exact opposite of each other and to drive the point further, the combination of the two stances is represented with a ball that is half sun, half moon, instead of an eclipse as one might expect.
- Fairy Companion: Soul
- Heroes Prefer Swords
- Light The Way
- The Power of the Sun / Lunacy: Post-revamp, their main buffs revolve around these tropes.
- Stance System: The Falling Moon stance reduces attack power, but increases critical rate and the number of hits attacks make while the Rising Sun stance increases attack power and attack speed instead. Equinox Cycle stacks both effects together and makes skills alternate between their Rising Sun and Falling Moon versions. 5th Job's Celestial Dance summons a phantom of the player that uses the opposite stance skills when the player does, essentially allowing them to use both stances at the exact same time.
- Storm of Blades: The Soul Driver skill. Replaced with Impaling Rays post-revamp.
- Sword Beam: Their Soul Blade skill creates one. Removed post-revamp.
- Irony: Mihile (their instructor) is considered one of the worst (if not the worst) playable character in the game, his skills also look much more primitive than the Dawn Warriors he teaches to the point they do not appear to be related in any way.
- You Will Not Evade Me: Moon Cross pulls distant enemies toward the user in contrast to Sun Cross which blows them away.
Blaze Wizard
Blaze Wizard
Also known as Flame Wizard
Voiced by: Jung Yu-jung (Korean, male), Lina Choi (Korean, female), Alex Bankier (English, male), Emi Lo (English, female), Riho Sugiyama (Japanese, male), Maaya Uchida (Japanese, female)
"As expected of any great Magicians, Blaze Wizards posses powerful magic. They can call on Ignis, the spirit of Fire, to fight with them. They can also merge with Ignis to release massive fire magic. Those who always strive to better themselves and are wary of self and enemy can become a Blaze Wizard."
- MapleStory entry on Blaze Wizards
Blaze Wizards were essentially more focused Fire/Poison Wizards, and they borrowed many of their skills from them. They had some serious advantages over their Adventurer brethren, at least until they reached the level cap. For one, they had a skill that can hit 6 monsters in second job (at a time when some classes didn't get mobbing skills until their third job.), and they also had Magic Booster, which increases attacking speed, earlier on. They also got several new, powerful skills notably Fire Strike, Flame Gear, and Summon Fire Sprite.
In the Cygnus Returns update, they lost many of their similarities with their Fire/Poison brethren, focusing more on barraging foes with Fireballs and creating barriers and pentacles to protect themselves and boost their Allies' offensive capabilities respectively
Tropes associated with Blaze Wizards:
- Boring, but Practical: Like a few other classes, Blaze Wizards revolve around using same skill in all four jobs as their primary attack, other skills being mostly situational, all of them being for manipulating positioning of enemies until 4th job.
- Damage Over Time: As one might expect from a user of fire magic, Blaze Wizards can burn enemies with their skills causing them to take extra damage over time, as well as explode on death. To further differentiate them from their cousins Fire/Poison Archmages though, the damage over time aspect of them was removed in the Ignition update in favor of focusing on the explosions.
- Double Jump: In stark contrast to most other Mages' Teleport Spam (although they phase out briefly during the jump to mechanically invoke the idea of a Teleport Spam), this also makes them more fast and mobile than most other mage classes.
- Fairy Companion: Flame Elemental, which can be replaced with Fires of Creation in 4th job, taking the shape of either a Lion or a Fox.
- Fantastic Nuke: Towering Inferno, which creates a towering pillar of fire at your location. Cataclysm drops a large fireball to burn all enemies in area.
- Fire Balls: Orbital Flame, a skill that shoots balls of fire that return to where they are cast and Blazing Extinction, a large, slow moving ball of flame that fires pillars of flame at nearby enemies. Meanwhile, 5th job gives them Orbital Inferno, which is basically a really big version of Orbital Flame.
- Gratuitous Latin: Ignis means "fire" in Latin.
- Make My Monster Grow: Can invoke this through Cinder Maelstrom, blowing a single monster up in size to create a vortex of fire around it, sucking in nearby enemies.
- More Dakka: Each job advancement allows a Blaze Wizard to have one more Orbital Flame on screen at a time, and Dragon Blaze, which assaults a single target with a rapid barrage of Fire Balls, changed in the Ignition update to instead buff Orbital Flame to fire a large amount of fire balls.
- Playing with Fire / Kill It with Fire
- Portal Door: Flashfire is a variation. It creates a flame at your location, and upon casting it again it teleports you back to the flame's location, allowing you to quickly reposition yourself when farming monsters.
- Stance System: Flames of Creation allows the player to summon either a Lion or a Fox, which was a purely aesthetic choice until Fifth Job added a V skill that interacts with it, and then the Ignition update builds on this idea by having the choice alter some of the Blaze Wizard's fourth job skills to be more oriented towards either bossing or mobbing.
Wind Archer
Wind Archer
Also known as Wind Breaker, unfortunately.
Voiced by: Kim Sin-woo (Korean, male), Jang Ye-na (Korean, female), Griffin Burns (English, male), Amanda Winn-Lee (English, female), Takao Mitsutomi (Japanese, male), Maaya Uchida (Japanese, female)
Wind Archers were arguably the most unique class of the Cygnus Knights pre-revamp, even after taking the shark-throwers into consideration. They borrowed a lot from Bowmasters (sans fire) but had many unique wind-based skills such as Wind Piercing and Wind Shot, and could summon the Spirit of the Winds.
In the Cygnus Returns update, they are the second Cygnus Knights class to receive a major rework, losing their famous Transformation Sequence and having their Fairy Companion downgraded to an Assist Character, but getting a Battle Aura, Scarf of Asskicking, Not Quite Flight and even more dakka to compensate.
Tropes associated with Wind Archers:
- Battle Aura: Albatross, a third job skill that was added to the revamped class, is this, first creating a temporary Sphere of Power around the player before dissipating into several green lines that circle the player and giving them a Badass Cape. It also has the very nice effect of drastically increasing the player's attack, health and Critical Hit rate.
- Blow You Away
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Does the Emerald Flower◊ look like an actual flower to you? Makes even less sense when upgraded to Emerald Dust in the 4th job advancement... while keeping its visual effect intact.
- Fairy Companion: Ventus is this to the original Wind Archer, but gets downgraded to an Assist Character in a first job skill post-revamp.
- Gratuitous Latin: Ventus means "wind" in Latin.
- Green Thumb: The rework has added a nature theme to their powers.
- Magikarp Power: Fairy Spiral, while a weak 2nd job skill meant more for positioning, is extremely fast and has a decent attack range. A Wind Archer who puts in the extreme amount of work to make it do decent damage will find it can become a mobbing skill far more efficient than their actual 4th job mobbing skill. The Ignition update even acknowledged how popular this is by making Fairy Spiral the Wind Archer's new main 4th job mobbing skill, swapping places with Spiraling Vortex.
- More Dakka: The pre-revamp version of this class was based on the Bowmaster, so this is to be expected. Post-revamp adds a passive that gives a chance to fire an extra homing arrow with every attack. Stormbringer also allows them to summon even more arrows alongside them. Combined with Song of Heaven's extreme fire rate and you have a class whose dakka can only be matched by Night Lords, Bow Masters, Corsairs, Wild Hunters, and Night Walkers.
- Not Quite Flight: The revamped Wind Breaker gets Wind Walk, a first job skill that shunts the player forwards, ignoring all collision damage during the movement. It can be used indefinitely even when the player is in mid-air, allowing them to ride a tornado horizontally across maps as long as they have the MP to spare.
- Rain of Arrows: The revamped Wind Archer gains Sentient Arrow, a third job skill, which is essentially this with Player-Guided Missile strapped to it.
- Scarf of Asskicking: Fairy Spiral, a post-revamp second job skill, slams enemies away with a powerful gust of wind shaped like a massive scarf, although the Ignition update changed the animation to a strike with the bow.
- Transformation Sequence: The original Wind Archer had this as a skill. It was removed post-revamp.
- Weather Manipulation: Monsoon summons large tornadoes to cover the whole screen
- Wind Is Green: Their original incarnation used a very pale almost white blue to represent their wind powers. And while that was still used in Spiraling Vortex, all their other post revamp skills use green wind, with purple showing up for stronger skills, Ignition removing the last of the pale blue outliers.
Night Walker
Night Walker
Voiced by: Bang Yeon-ji (Korean, female), Kim Hyeon-uk (Korean, male), Emi Lo (English, female), Nicolas Roye (English, male), Nao Natsuno (Japanese, female), Shou Karino (Japanese, male)
"Luck, a bit of dexterity, skill, and being quite cunning separates the Night Walkers from the rest. Though marked and assisted by the spirit of darkness, Umbra, Night Walkers put great importance in independence, which leads some to learn poison skills. Night Walkers serve justice in places where light does not reach, so those who are willing to serve in the shadows may become a Night Walker."
- MapleStory entry on Night Walkers
Night Walkers were very similar to the Adventurers Night Lord Class, in that they both use throwing stars/knives, Avenger, and had many of the same skills. Sound familiar? In addition to the class staples such as Lucky 7, not to be confused with Lucky Star or Happy Seven, and Triple Throw, they also had access to several poison and dark skills, notably Vampire, Poison Bomb, Venom, and calling on the Sprite of Darkness.
After the Cygnus Returns update they develop a greater focus on throwing star attacks, Bat summons, and shadow play
Tropes associated with Night Walkers:
- Animal Motifs: Bats
- Bat Scare: Dark Omen summons a whole flock of bats, increasing based on the amount of enemies around the Night Walker.
- Bottomless Magazines: Like Pirates, Archers, and the Thieves they have a skill that allows them to spend a few stars to give them unlimited ammo for a short duration.
- Casting a Shadow/ Dark Is Not Evil
- Crippling Overspecialization: The combination of their bats and their high speed star throwing makes them incredibly strong bossers that are hard to kill due to their ability to constantly drain HP from their foes. The trade-off is that their reliance on bats led them to have very little in the way of strong mobbing skills, with the only spammable mobbing move they get at all being the 3rd job skill Shadow Spark, forcing them to farm for quests one monster at a time.
- Damage Over Time: Through Adaptive Darkness
- Dark Is Not Evil: Their motif. Night Walkers are considered the Black Ops unit of the Cygnus Knights, taking assignments that would make other Knights queasy. Nevertheless, they're just as heroic as their Explorer counterparts.
- Doppelgänger Attack: Shadow Servant is comparable to Adventurer Thieves' Shadow Partner except the Shadow Servant mimics all actions of its master after a short delay rather than instantly. Shadow Illusion adds two extra servants.
- Double Jump: A triple jump like the other Thieves.
- Emergent Gameplay: Because of how their Shadow Servant works, throwing stars while jumping at the same time causes stars to be thrown twice as fast as usual. This jump casting mechanic was eventually determined to be worth keeping as it gives them a unique bossing pattern, and patches simply balanced them around it instead of removing it. The Ignition update canonized this technique even further with a passive buff that simply gives throwing the speed the exploit provided with a much easier activation condition of simply staying mobile in general.
- Fairy Companion: Umbra
- The Gambler: They have a luck and gambling motif going on, albeit in appearance only.
- Fragile Speedster: Incredibly high attack speed and mobility but will drop like wet paper if they ever stop attacking and moving.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: They're not actually vampires, but they might as well be with all of their life-draining skills along with their heavy bat motif.
- I Can Still Fight!: When downed, Night Walkers can resurrect themselves once every thirty minutes, regaining health proportional to the number of bats that are flying around at the time of their defeat and briefly rendering them invulnerable.
- Life Drain: Through Bat Affinity.
- Magikarp Power: Although they may seem severely disadvantaged at mobbing at first glance, their bats have great attacking range and ricochet into multiple mobs in a manner similar to Chain Lightning. Once a Night Walker gets some additional tools in 5th job and grows enough power that the bats can one shot, they'll have no problem clearing maps with ease, even opting to use their single target throwing skills instead of their mobbing attack simply because the former will generate bats faster.
- More Dakka: Post revamp, they one up Night Lords in terms of star throwing at every level, throwing 2 instead of 1 at first job and 5 instead of 4 at fourth job. And then they get a buffed version of Shadow Partner that gives three shadow clones, allowing them to quadruple the amount of stars they throw. And this still doesn't take into account the bats.
- Mythology Gag: Having almost entirely single target throwing skills with only a single Fuuma Shuriken for mobbing is a lot like how the original Night Lords were.
- Ninja: If their shuriken reliance didn't tip it off for you.
- Shadow Pin: Shadow Stitch binds enemies around the Night Walker
- Stance System: Ignition gives them two modes to their bat summons, the original where bats fly off and attack multiple foes for mobbing, and a new bat that attacks one target once for heavy damage for bossing.
- Theme Music Powerup: Their post revamp Hyper Skill, Dominion, temporarily changes the battlefield to a nightscape, changing the background music in the process.
- Videogame Dashing: Shadow Dodge allows them to quickly cancel their attack and dash backwards.
Thunder Breaker
Thunder Breaker
Also known as Striker
Voiced by: Kim Yea-lim (Korean, female), Lee Ju-seung (Korean, male), Amanda Winn-Lee (English, female), Adin Rudd (English, male), Miki Yakata (Japanase, female), Shuta Morishima (Japanese, male)
Pre-revamp, All you really needed to know about them is that they were the Cygnus Knights' equivalent of the Brawler class, and that they threw Sharks. OF LIGHTNING. But they wouldn't like that. In contention for the title of "Most Unique Knight" along with Wind Archers, Thunder Breakers use the element of lightning along with powerful strikes from their Knuckles. They did gain the Brawlers' Super Mode and shared some other skills with them, but for the most part, they had unique punch skills and can throw LIGHTNING SHARKS. They also had some more lightning-based skills, but none are quite as iconic as the LIGHTNING SHARKS. Did we mention they throw Sharks? OF LIGHTNING?
They were the first Cygnus Knights class to get a major rework in the Cygnus Returns update, using a new battle style that revolves around delivering massive damage through chaining attacks to each other in rapid succession.
Tropes associated with Thunder Breakers:
- Anchors Away: One of a Thunder Breaker's fourth job skills is called Bolt Anchor/Thunderbolt, which as its name implies, allows you to smash an opponent with an electrically charged (albeit stylized) anchor.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: They use knuckle coverings, but otherwise fit the bill.
- Blow You Away: Gale (Whirlwind) and Typhoon (Advanced Whirlwind).
- Combos: Their biggest post-revamp feature is the ability to chain almost any skill into any other skill, creating powerful combos of attacks to obliterate enemies.
- Charged Attack: Similar to Heroes, they can accumulate Lightning Charges, which lets them ignore some defense, or power-up Annihilate. The charges can also be spent on Gale or Typhoon to power up the rest of your attacks for a set period.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Besides being fragile, you have to keep track of your MP (due to rapid skill usage), while continuously using flexible skill combinations to maximize their combo boost. Get hit a lot, or use too much MP note and you will have to use a potion, which will interrupt your combo.
- Fairy Companion: Lightning.
- Flash Step: Flash allows them to dash forward or to a nearby enemy and attack.
- Fragile Speedster: Faster, yet not quite as durable as their explorer counterparts.
- Magikarp Power: Lightning Punch. Although it is easy to overlook as a weak first job skill, because of its fast animation and how Thunder Breakers work, it allows Thunder Breakers to quickly use just one of their 4th job moves in extremely fast succession, which can be useful depending on the situation.
- Making a Splash: The Revamp changes their skills from pure electricity to a combination of electricity and water.
- Shamu Fu: Can throw sharks made of lightning at high levels. Gets taken In their rework, they gain a lightning shark punch (1st job), somersault kick (2nd job), uppercut (3rd job), charge attack (4th job), tthe ability to summon a giant whale (Hyper Skill) and finally the triumphant return of the ability to throw a shark as a long-range projectile (5th job).
- Spam Attack: You have to interrupt and chain attacks together to maximize damage, something not normally available to other classes. As such, they have relatively high attacking speed.
- Super Mode: Lost their transformation post-revamp but made up for it with a skill that charges their attacks with electricity, doubling the number of hits they deal with each skill attack (but for reduced damage on those extra hits).
- Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: In their original incarnation their lightning was a unique shade of green. Post revamp it is now a very bright blue, because it is mostly all mixed in with water. Their Arc Charger buff does invoke the traditional yellow lightning.
Chief Knight Player Classes
The Chief Knights Of Cygnus
Empress Cygnus is still a child, and she still needs her knights to protect her. Chief among those are the Chief Knights: Mihile, the Chief Knight of Light, Oz, the Chief Knight of Fire, Irena, the Chief Knight of Wind, Eckheart, the Chief Knight of Darkness, and Hawkeye, the Chief Knight of Lightning. These five knights will do anything in their power to protect their Empress, and along with her, the world she rules.
Chief Knights retain several benefits of the original Cygnus class, such as extra EXP until fourth job advancement and being able to make an Ultimate Adventurer upon reaching their fourth job advancement. Their level cap, however, is the same as non-Cygnus classes.
Mihile
Voiced by: Choi Ji-hoon (Korean), Tony Azzolino (English), Masaaki Mizunaka (Japanese)
As NPC/Dawn Warrior's Instructor
Mihile/Mikhail is the first Chief Knight class released based off the eponymous NPC. His special skill, when active, ignores knockback from enemy attacks for a time; this skill can be taught to other characters in the same account once Mihile reaches higher levels. Upon making the fourth job advancement, he gains the Echo of Hero skill and the player can create an Ultimate Adventurer by completing one of his side-quests.
Mihile specialises in close-ranged, multi-hit attacks. He uses one-handed swords and is equipped with the Soul Shield, a special shield that increases in power when he acquires experience. Mihile's relatively lackluster base attack is offset by his above average mobility and heavily augmented by buff skills that also affect party members.
As the Chief Knight of Light, Mihile shares some similarities with the original Dawn Warrior, the other Cygnus Knight character class that employs the power of light, particularly in appearance.
Tropes associated with Mihile:
- Continuity Snarl: Playing an existing NPC as a child can do that. All Mihile's own storyline does is assume the story is set in the past while all other story content does nothing else to accommodate this.
- Difficult, but Awesome: While the concept of parrying attacks means a Mihile player has to be paying a bit more attention than usual, the rewards are well worth the effort, with each successful Royal Guard creating not just a progressively stronger attack, but also granting Mihile a brief window of invincibility that lasts just about until the next Royal Guard is readynote . As long as the player doesn't miss a parry; a skilled Mihile can spend more time completely invincible than they do being vulnerable!
- Disappeared Dad: When Mihile was still a baby, his father, Chromile, was forced by his mom to save him; in doing so, she died, and Chromile lost his fighting spirit, leaving Mihile with Limbert and disappearing deep into Sleepywood alone.
- Divergent Character Evolution: As he was designed prior to the Cygnus Knights Revamp he was initially only an upgraded version of the original Dawn Warrior. After their revamp, Mihile keeps some of his skills that he shared with the original Dawn Warriors but was also given Royal Guard and had Shining Buster Replaced with Radiant Cross to differentiate himself from other classes. Amusingly enough the divergence has become so strong that Mihile now plays absolutely nothing like his students do.
- Future Badass: Grows up to be one of the Knight Captains of the Cygnus Knights.
- Hard Light: Mihile's ranged attacks basically involve him smashing monsters up with the power of light, not his sword.
- Immune to Flinching: While this is hardly a unique thing for a warrior, Mihile is notable in that his Knight's Watch Link skill ws a 100% knock-back resistance buff when used by other classes, making Mihile the only decent source of knock-back resistance for classes that don't get any before the Destiny update gave every class 100% knockback resistance.
- Irony: Despite being the Dawn Warrior instructor his own attacks resemble the students he teaches very little (if at all). Dawn Warriors are considered a middle of the road class while Mihile himself is often among the worst.
- Laser Blade / Sword Beam: Gets skills in his first, third and fourth job that allows him to hit multiple enemies with either a disc-shaped projectile or a gigantic blade-shaped beam of light.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: A later update has him gain a skill called Royal Guard, which when timed correctly allows him to block most attacks and gain a stackable damage boost in the process, encouraging players to have good timing and keen awareness to make up for his lack of moblity.
- Missing Mum: Mihile's mother was killed when he was still a baby. She forced Chromile to save Mihile instead of her, sacrificing herself in the process.
- One-Gender Race: When creating a Mihile, it will go straight to the naming part of character creation. Justified in that Mihile is, of course, an existing NPC.*
- The Paladin: Gives the actual Paladin class a run for their money with a greater emphasis on blocking damage with the shield and protecting party members by redirecting some of their damage to him and various barriers he can conjure to defend them.
- Spell My Name With An S: Mihile and Mikhail. The names are possibly based on the Archangel Michael.
- Stone Wall: Extremely high defenses and HP, and a parry mechnic to avoid damage entirely, offset by extremely low MP, below average base attack and above average mobility.
- Storm of Blades: Soul Driver and Four-Point Assault.
The Resistance
In General
The Resistance
The Resistance classes share many things with the adventurers but with a twist; something resembling a backstory. Resistance characters start out in the town of Edelstein, a town under control of the Black Wings, an organization affiliated with the Black Mage. From there they rescue a young girl from a strange science lab, and your character discovers a secret underground group who secretly combat the Black Wings under the cover of their everyday personas. In secret.
Note: Please only place tropes here that apply to all Resistance characters as a whole. Tropes specific to certain jobs can go under that job's section.
Tropes associated with all Resistance classes:
- Archenemy: With the exception of The Demon, all of the Resistance members have a particular axe to grind with Gelimer for his horrible experiments, including (but not limited to) experimentation on countless children (including Vita and Xenon), the development of weaponry used to terrorize Edelstein's populace, the creation of Black Heaven, and the death of Vita by using her as a Manchurian Agent.
- Badass Crew: A secretive, close-knit crew of freedom fighters who follow their own code and won't take orders from anyone if it doesn't help their cause. This is not even including the fact that several of members bail out characters from other stories and the inclusion of a former Black Mage Commander (meaning raid-boss level badass) and Gelimer's ultimate android.
- Darker and Edgier: Their storyline compared to most of the other classes. It is the only storyline where an ally, the girl you saved at the beginning of the game, is explicitly murdered on screen. There are also mentions of the use of hostages and poison gas by corrupt officials to control the populace while Black Wing grunts constantly prowl the streets much like Hitler's Gestapo (though most of them are incompetent).
- Fantastic Racism: Due to an incident which resulted in the Black Wings taking over Edelstein, they really hate the Cygnus Knights and they will single you out if they find out you're one of them. They get over it by the time the Alliance is born, though. Mostly anyways, since the antagonist shows up again during Black Heaven and is reignited by Lucid's creation of a bad future where the Cygnus Knights betrayed everyone.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: The Resistance members are the one to show the most zeal for the raid of Black Heaven and finally taking Gelimer down. Considering all of the shit they were put through directly or indirectly as a result of his experiments, this is rightly justified. Any of the original three Resistance classes will also bring up Vita's death in anger upon confronting Gelimer personally.
- La Résistance: Well, what did you expect? The Spanish Inquisition?
- Paper-Thin Disguise: It's pretty easy for them to fool the lesser members of the Black Wings; they can access the mine with simply a Black Wing hat. (Getting one isn't available until they're about Lvl 70.
- Spy Speak: The Black Wings are <Roaches>, their surveillance tapes are <Dances>, and supplies are <Naps>. An early tutorial questline has you use this code to warn Surl that the Black Wings suspect he is providing the resistance with suppliesnote and remember that you don't need to use code in the safety of the Resistance base, lest you get funny looks.
- Steampunk: There are some aspects of the core Resistance classes and Edelstein that are steampunk. The Mechanic in general, the Battle Mage's goggles, the Wild Hunter's crossbow skills, and the Blaster's Arm Cannons for example. Revamps strengten this theme all around, replacing Battle Mage's magical Dark Genesis with a Tesla Coil attack.
Battle Mage
Battle Mage
Voiced by: Kim Yul (Korean, female), Lee Sang-ho (Korean, male), Aiko Okubo (Japanese, female), Yuya Murakami (Japanese, male)
"The Battle Mage is the Magician class of the Resistance. This class is very unique in the fact that while the rest of the magicians are ranged fighters, Battle Mages battle in close combat. Another unique ability is their Auras, which can improve you and your party member's attributes. Battle Mages uses Staffs as their main weapon of choice. Unfortunately, Battle Mages have no Magic Guard, but they have the highest base HP of all Magicians to compensate for it and the ability to use Teleport earlier."
- Maple Wiki Page on Battle Mages
Battle Mages have a few things in common with the regular mage. They both teleport, and they both use magic. The similarities end there though. Battle Mages are up-close-and-personal versions of the Magician class, more similar to a warrior than a Mage. They can deal up close hits through the use of Staff Blow, and can draw foes in with Dark Chain. They also have several auras that boost various stats of themselves and those around them, making them useful in a party.
Their revamp in the Black Heaven update brings their Grim Reaper summon into the core of their gameplay. After killing off enough normal monsters or hitting a boss enough times, their reaper will transform to deal a massive slash with its scythe, providing a large source of DPS and AoE for the Battle Mage.
Tropes associated with Battle Mages:
- Artifact Title: Their Dark Genesis skilled was so called because it used to be very much a dark version of the Bishop's Genesis skill; calling on a angel of darkness to make pillars of darkness erupt from the ground instead of pillars of light rain from the sky. Now that it instead summons a tesla coil, the name doesn't make as much sense.
- Beehive Barrier: Party Shield creates a Barrier that prevents most damage taken when within it.
- Boring, but Practical: Their entire attack pattern is using the same 3 skills (two of which you get right off the bat) while being supplemented by buffs. Their other attacks are situational.
- Casting a Shadow: Many of their skills have dark appearances, are dark elemental, and Dark Genesis was an outright dark version of the Bishops ultimate skill before being altered into dark Tesla coils.
- Dance Battler: Post-Revamp encourages them to teleport between enemies in order to constantly leave and consume a mark to augment their damage output.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Most of their attacks are tinged a dark purple to imply their connection to dark forces. Nevertheless, thy're just as heroic as the other classes.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: Their Revamp gives them a rather cute Reaper by their side who transforms to attack with a massive scythe slash after a certain amount of souls are collected.
- Fiery Redhead: Official art used to have a male example of these with scowling face ready to fight, but the current art shows a much more mellow looking girl.
- Kung-Fu Wizard: The first Magician in the game to specialize in close-range combat with their staff.
- Life Drain: Draining Aura. It also causes the attacks of your party members to drain hp for you.
- Magic Staff: Battle Mages are restricted to using staves and only staves, if they want to attack anyway.
- Shock and Awe: While not actually electric-elemental, they have a skill in the third job that lets them unleash dark lightning on enemies by teleporting through them or hitting them with a skill active for extra damage. Post-Revamp, their Dark Genesis skill had its animation changed to strike enemies with dark Tesla coils.
- Sleep-Mode Size: The Battle Mage's reaper is normally kept as an adorable, almost pet-like companion. After absorbing enough monster souls, it grows to an imposingly large size before swinging its scythe for heavy damage.
- Squishy Wizard: Averted thanks to Draining Aura, Blue Aura, and Ordinary Conversion. And that's not even counting the three different ways they can become invincible.
- Stance System: Post Revamp makes Auras mutually exclusive, but had some of their previous effects made passive to compensate.
- Teleport Spam: Their Combat Teleport can be enhanced with Dark Shock, which causes a lightning bolt to arc between the start and end points of their teleport and inflict a Damage-Increasing Debuff, making Teleport Spam a useful part of increasing Battle Mage's damage output, which is even supported by them having the unique ability to teleport up into the air (all other mages need ground to teleport to) for no purpose other than to inflict a Dark Shock.
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Along with the Boring, but Practical entry, the majority of the Battle Mage's damage output is simply holding down the skill key for their damage swings. However, success involves use of this along with strategic teleporting and aura choice, but the core gameplay never really changes between job advancements.
Wild Hunter
Wild Hunter
Voiced by: Lim Chae-bin (Korean, male), Yoon A-young (Korean, female), Chiaki Kobayashi (Japanese, male), Haruna Kawai (Japanese, female)
"“Resistance” classes comprise three groups of people from the town of Edelstein who have formed an underground resistance movement against the Black Wings, the evil minions of the Black Mage who have taken over the town. Resistance classes include the noble Battle Mages who use their magic to protect their friends and smash their foes, and the valiant Mechanics, ordinary citizens of Edelstein who ride powerful prototype robots loaded with experimental weaponry. Finally, the brave Wild Hunters use crossbows and an incredible riding jaguar in combat."
- Acorn Story: Playing a Wild Hunter
Wild Hunters are, essentially, Jaguar-riding versions of Crossbowmen. Their skills may be different, but at their core, they both use crossbows, and attack from a distance, though the Wild Hunter has some means of getting around that.
Because of their Jaguars, they are among the fastest classes in terms of ground movement speed while being a unique class in which meany of their skills can be used while moving. With their rework in the Black Heaven update, their playstyle is expanded between mounting their Jaguars to have their Artillery deal splash damage to multiple enemies, or they can dismount and fight alongside their jaguars to focus their assault on single targets. The Wild Hunter can set up turrets that provide ballistic fire and overwhelm enemies with a fusillade of missiles and arrows.
Tropes associated with Wild Hunters:
- 100% Completion: Averted, while Wild Hunters do get bonuses for taking the time to capture multiple jaguars, only seven out of a possible nine (one of which can only be obtained in special events) jaguars are needed to maximize the effectiveness of Jaguar Link and Jaguar Storm.
- Assist Character: The Jaguar when not mounted. It will automatically attack like most summons and can use its own skills that inflict debufs that increase the lines of damage the Wild Hunter does with their crossbow.
- Automatic Crossbows: Setting themselves apart from Explorer Crossbowmen and showing their Steampunk roots, Wild Hunters use mechanisms to allow them to shoot multiple crossbow bolts in quick succession, culminating in Wild Arrow Blast, which allows them to fire a continual rapid fire stream of arrows.
- Chunky Updraft: The Sonic Roar skill raises rocks from the ground which then explode from the force of the Jaguar's roar.
- Double Jump: Can be a triple jump if the Wild Hunter is mounted.
- Immune to Flinching: Pre-revamp, only available on the rare Snow White and Onyx Jaguar mounts. Post revamp, available on all Jaguars, but only in mounted mode.
- More Dakka: In case the Wild Arrow Blast rapid fire skill wasn't enough, the revamp gives Wild Hunters an additional set of guns strapped onto the side of the Jaguar that fires whenever the Wild Hunter uses their crossbow skills, giving them one of the highest dakka rates among all playable characters.
- Mounted Combat: They have the unique ability to attack while retaining full mobility thanks to their jaguar mounts.
- Panthera Awesome: They're huge, they have sabre teeth, and if the NPC Black Jack is any indication, they talk!
- Power Gives You Wings: Feline Berserk gives Wild Hunters a sizable boost in power and also makes the Jaguar sprout a set of burning wings.
- Power Glows: All of the special jaguars that provide extra boosts glow in some way; Armored Crimson has glowing markings on its body, Jaira has Glowing Eyes, Snow White has Glowing Eyes and glowing body markings, and Onyx Jaguar has Glowing Eyes and a body that burns with blue flames.
- Random Drops: While regular colored Jaguars are the most common kind of Jaguar to find in the Jaguar Sanctuary, with enough patience, one can find special rarely spawning Jaguars that provide extra boosts like Armored Crimson, Jaira and Snow White.
- Stance System: The revamp gives them two ways to fight, either on their Jaguar with extra mobility and firepower from the Jaguar's extra cannons enhancing mobbing capability, or off Jaguar with the Jaguar fighting as an independently controllable summon enhancing bossing capability.
- The Straight and Arrow Path: Uses crossbows when magic and guns are commonplace.
- The Turret Master: Like their Mechanic friends they're able to deploy machines to help them in battle, in the Hunter's case a set of large, bullet spewing gears and turrets that launch salvos of rocket-powered drills.
- This Is a Drill: Their Drill Salvo ability deploys a machine that shoots these.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: You can prance through the middle of town on your jaguar and no one will bat an eye. This is especially egregious in Edelstein, where the Black Wings have pretty much put a hit out on the girl who rides such a jaguar in the exact same style.
Mechanic
Mechanic
Voiced by: Sung Ye-won (Korean, female), Seok Seung-hoon (Korean, male), Anna Yamaki (Japanese, female), Yuri Ise (Japanese, male)
"Mechanics are close range fighters that like to get in their enemies faces and pound them with merciless metal fists. When that fails, they also have an array of powerful homemade weapons to call on as backup. As Mechanics level up, their job advancement and growing skills focus on turning their Mech into an ever-growing metallic monstrosity able to take on all comers. They will also develop an array of subsidiary robotic soldiers they can summon to the battlefield that include medical droids that can heal them in combat, mini-recon drones to fight alongside, and even a mini-robot factory that pours out legions of self-destructing robots to annihilate enemies."
- Acorn Story: Playing a Mechanic
The last, but not least, of the Resistance classes released during the Big Bang update, Mechanics deal large amounts of damage by controlling a giant robot which preforms their attacks. Many Mechanics play for their love of the class, but a significant number who made the class upon release mostly played it for the attractive skills and even more attractive damage at that time; although this applies to any newly-released class in MapleStory, it was particularly obvious with Mechanics.
The Black Heaven update revamped Mechanics by reducing the number of Mech Modes from 5 to 2 but increasing the efficiency of those 2 modes, Humanoid Mode for general hunting and Tank Mode for for Bossing. Homing Beacon, a new skill, allows them to constantly bombard missiles on enemies during their other attacks to allow for constant damage. The Mechanic can summon a large array of robots to heal allies, create fields of electricity to damage enemies, or to blast enemies with missiles.
Tropes associated with Mechanics:
- Assist Character: Compare Corsairs who summon crew members and animals to help them, Mechanics deploy many gadgets and robots to help them.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Their biggest flaw pre-revamp is that each transformation traded mobility for power in a game where mobility became more and more important for bossing.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: You learn the mechanic job from Checky, an anthropomorphic bear disguised as a guy who is perpetually seen in a teddy bear costume.
- Gatling Good: The Gatling Gun skill. After making the second job advancement, it fires two more bullets per volley by its replacement, Heavy Gatling Gun.
- Mini-Mecha: All of their skills, bar none, depend on the Mech that they receive when choosing this class, which is upgraded fairly often.
- Not Quite Flight: They can use the battle suit to rocket through the air, but it consumes Mana quickly.
- More Dakka: This can first be accomplished after the second job advancement with Homing Beacon as it can fire out homing missiles while using other skills, allowing to rapidly bombard enemies.
- Portal Door: Open Portal: GX-9 allows you to place up to two portals on a map and teleport between them, making it useful to avoid certain boss attacks or simply to quickly move across the map while farming.
- Powered Armor: They need to be in their Mech to use their attacks, but they can equip it to themselves quickly.
- Rocket Jump: Well, technically they use a jet pack, but they do gain a skill that gives them amazing vertical mobility. It also causes damage to nearby enemies when they land.
- Spam Attack: Heavy Salvo Plus
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: All of the Mechanic's various devices explode when they expire for extra damage, this even includes support devices that don't otherwise do any damage to enemies at all.
- Stance System: Humanoid mode gives the Mechanic multi targets moves for hunting while Tank mode gives the Mechanic stronger single target moves for Bossing.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Can deal amazing amounts of damage earlier than other jobs. Somewhat downplayed now since they've been nerfed to be more in line with other classes
- Tank Goodness: After third job advancement, he can convert his mecha to tank mode and deal death to enemies with more powerful ammunition, although it consumes Mana very fast.
- The Turret Master: Maplestory's king for this trope, deploying teleporters, electric traps, cannons, mini robot factories, and other nifty toys to help them out. Originally they could even turn their mech itself into a stationary turret for bossing, but this was abandoned in their revamp as becoming stationary is a highly impractical thing to do in most modern boss encounters.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Like the Wild Hunter, no one thinks twice about a kid piloting a large mech.
Blaster
Blaster
Voiced by: Min-a (Korean, female), Mayuko Kazama (Japanese, female), Masaya Wada (Japanese, male)
Male
The first "true" Warrior job for the Resistance class since it follows the storyline of the original three. Sharing the steampunk style of their compatriots, they utilize Arm Cannons and Charges to dish out explosive amounts of damage at point blank range.
Tropes associated with Blasters:
- Battle Tops: The Ballistic Hurricane lets a Blaster spin wildly and punch everything they touch.
- Bottomless Magazines: Zigzagged. While their weapons do need to be reloaded, they do so automatically, and you don't have to pick up and/or buy ammunition.
- Boxing Battler: Aside from their explosive weaponry, they almost exclusively use punches to attack. They can also Bob and Weave to increase their dodge rate, just like a real boxer.
- Charged Attack: The skills Bobbing, Weaving and Hammer Smash. Uniquely, you can charge two of the three at any one time, and the player can use other skills while charging them.
- Double Jump: Like most warriors, it alone is not that great of a double jump. Unlike most warriors, if used in conjunction with their Rocket Jump, a Blaster can cover a very large distance in a short amount of time.
- Difficult, but Awesome: While they have the highest amount Some Dexterity Required in the game, a player willing to master and endure the dexterity required is rewarded with some of the highest damage output in the game, frequently topping damage charts.
- Elemental Punch: Creates fiery explosions with every strike.
- Gatling Good: Their Revolving Cannon skill uses a weapon that resembles a cross between a gatling gun and a "super revolver"; while it is a Skill unto itself, it can be combined with other Skills for far more firepower.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Rocket Rush lets Blaster grab an enemy and make a destructive bull rush while dragging said enemy along, as well as any other enemies in his path.
- The skill Magnum Launch allows the Blaster to fire the grabbed enemy out of their weapon as an explosive projectile.
- Having a Blast: They just love making things explode, and their skills can give Angel Buster a run for her money on it.
- Impossibly Cool Weapon: A wrist mounted Pile Bunker that's used like Yang Xiao Long's Ember Celica.
- Pile Bunker: The whole point of the class, driving in rounds at point blank range for massive damage. Ironically enough, the skill actually called Release Pile Bunker works more similarly to a nail gun, creating an explosive shockwave on impact.
- Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Ballistic Hurricane works like this, punching so quickly in directions that it creates a localized cyclone around the Blaster, dragging unfortunate enemies into range to be pummeled.
- Rocket Jump: Can blast themselves around by detonating rounds in front of them or below them for a horizontal or vertical boost.
- Some Dexterity Required: Most classes can just hold down one skill button while fighting bosses. Optimal bossing for Blasters is a little more complicated., by having bobbing or weaving charged while attacking they can be used to cancel out of the endlag of their two hit combo the end lag of that which can be cancelled out by jumping. Combined with a passive that reloads two rounds for using a charged skill, if they can keep up this cycle of five buttons they can attack indefinitely without having to reload.
Demon
Demon
Voiced by: Kim Seung-jun (Korean, male; trailer), Choi Won-hyeong (Korean, male; in game), Kim Hye-seong (Korean, male; post-Heroes of Maple), Jeong Yumi (Korean, female), Tony Azzolino (English, male), Stephanie Komure (English, female), Tarusuke Shingaki (Japanese, male), Kumi Tanaka (Japanese, female)
The Demon is the Warrior class of the Resistance, although he shares more in common with the Legends than the Resistance with regards to his storyline. The Demon was once one of the Black Mage's most powerful commanders, until his fellow commanders destroyed his hometown and killed his family. He attempted to fight the Black Mage, seeking revenge, but the Black Mage was too strong for him, and cursed him, taking away his former power. He then joins up with the Resistance, seeking revenge on the Black Mage and training to recover his former strength.Note: Please only place tropes here that apply to the Demon class as a whole. Tropes specific to branches can go under that branch's section.
Tropes associated with the Demon classes:
- A Dog Named "Dog" / His Name Really Is "Barkeep": If Damien'sbackstory comic means anything, the Demon Slayer's Canon Name is... Demon.
- Anti-Hero: Pretty deadset on his goals to the point where he sees the Resistance as just a stepping stone to get to where he needs to.
- Badass Longcoat: Part of his starter attire.
- Black Knight: Warrior class, was The Dragon for the Black Mage, dark themed attacks, violet skin, red eyes, black clothing...
- Cast from Hit Points: Seems to be a central game mechanic for this class. The Demon Slayer has some skills that drain some HP in addition to Demon Force, but the Demon Avenger has HP as the primary stat, damage done based mainly on current HP, and having almost all his skills drain his HP.
- Casting a Shadow: A merciless, somewhat sadistic individual who harnesses the powers of darkness with his attacks... but is really a kind person who cares for his family above all.
- Cultured Badass: Has a very proper way of speaking, and both the Slayer and Avenger outfits are rather elaborate and formal.
- Dark Is Not Evil: His skills rely on darkness or otherwise demonic forces, but he's as good as they get.
- Doomed Hometown: It was the southern region of Leafre. The Temple of Time, which was the Black Mage's final stronghold, is just a short dragon flight away. In actual fact it was Arkanium who attacked Demon's home out of jealousy and not the Black Mage himself.
- Disappeared Dad: We see surprisingly little of his demon father. The locket he keeps of his family only has a picture of his mother and brother, and they are the only ones he looks for in the ruins of his home. In the final act of Heroes of Maple Demon reveals to Damien that their father protested against the evil ambitions of their race and was locked up till he died by the other demons.
- Double Jump: He can do a pathetically short forward jump that is completely outclassed by the fact that he can also do a very fast glide jump instead.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: Provided this role to the heroes during their first assault on the Black Mage.
- Evil Is Hammy: Well he isn't completely evil, but his lines and voice come across as this during battle.
- Evil Laugh: Has a pretty intimidating one during certain attacks, justified given his past as a former Black Mage Commander.
- Fantastic Racism: More neutral than usual iterations of this trope: It seems that people are more not sure what to make of him than outright hostile, and it's implied in some quest dialogue that the Resistance gives him a means to disguise himself- but he still does get a fair amount of sideways comments. And dealt with it much worse when his family was living in Tynerum, this time from other demons for being half-human. Further exemplified by Damien calling out on what happened to him and his race after Demon lost against the Black Mage: the humans in southern Leafre forced out the peaceful demons for supporting the Black Mage and sent them to Tyrenum where they were forced to work as slaves under stronger demons.
- Flat "What": Says this to his underling Mastema, when he hears one of her slightly ludicrous plans to return to her normal demon form.
- Half-Human Hybrid: His father was a Demon, while his mother was a regular human.
- Horned Humanoid: Not officially, but a Demon-themed cash shop package featured horns, and equippable horns were released as promotional items for both the Demon Slayer and Demon Avenger.
- Heel–Face Turn: Betrayed his superior, the Black Mage, when his fellow commander Arkanium burned down all of Leafre and the southern region, including his home where his family resided.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mentally apologizes for riffling through Francis's diary for information, and genuinely cares about both his family and his underling, Mastema, to the extent of going on several Fetch Quests for her benefit. However, he also has a calculating side, and initially joins the Resistance with the impression that he can 'use' them to his advantage.
- Large Ham: Quite verbal when annoyed or in the midst of battle.ARE YOU TESTING MY PATIENCE?!I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!DIE!
- Morality Pet: His love for his family is what motivates him to Anti-Hero levels of determination towards defeating the Black Mage.
- Not Quite Flight / Flight: The Demon is often seen flying in game cutscenes and official trailers, be it soloing the Black Mage or facing down a four-headed monarch. In-game, however, you are much more likely to see Demons gliding across maps at very high speed rather than actually flying. It is also worth noting that while he gets a starter skill that indeed makes him fly slightly above the ground by flapping his wings, it comes with all the same limitations as most mounts (you can't use any skills) and is nowhere as useful as his gliding skill, which is also available at the start.
- Oblivious to Love: Seems utterly clueless to the fact that his servant Mastema has a crush on him, even after an Interrupted Declaration of Love and much Ship Tease in their dialogues.
- One-Gender Race: Although not to the same extent as Mercedes. There is more official art of the male Demon than female one, and only the male Demon Slayer is seen in the Root Abyss animated trailer. Though notably, the Demon is the only class with two versions of their FMV opening animation for both genders.
- Power Gives You Wings: Demon's wings are seen being burned off in his Level Drain. They start off very small and slowly grow in size in each job advancement until they're back to how they were in 4th job.
- Power Tattoo: In the art, around his left eye. In-game, you can choose from a number of them or none at all.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Though the female Demon Slayer has Supernatural Gold Eyes for the trailer.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In the tutorial...and he doesn't seem to be done with it, either. When he hears the Black Mage may be making a return, he response was, "That's good news... That means I can still have my revenge!" Doesn't seem like he'll be stopping anytime soon, after Damien dies in Heroes of Maple thanks to the Black Mage's influence.
- Tragic Keepsake: Had a locket with a picture of his family. He lost it when the Black Mage defeated him. Damien gives it back to him in a later part of his storyline.
- True Companions: When he meets the Goddess of the Maple World, he can state that Mastema is the one he cherishes more than anything else, even his old home.
- Winged Humanoid
Demon Slayer
"The Demon Slayer is primarily a melee combat character that’s extremely tough and unique. Unlike other characters, Demon Slayers don’t use Mana to fuel their skills, instead relying on “Demon Fury” which works quite differently from Mana. You will also be fighting with a built-in shield called the Demon Aegis, and unlike other Warrior-types, you cannot switch out your shield. The result is a tank class that can fight long and hard, use their unique skills to dish out a lot of punishment, and still protect their friends."
- Acorn Story: Playing a Demon Slayer
The Demon Slayer is the original branch in the Demon character class and is, by canon, the branch the Demon was in his backstory, as well as the class he starts off as. The Demon Slayer shares several traits with previous classes, such as Aran's use of the basic attack button, and the same skill looking similar to the Battle Mage's Triple Blow skill.
The Demon Slayer was released during the Legends update.
Tropes associated with Demon Slayer:
- Carry a Big Stick: Uses maces and one-handed axes exclusively.
- Critical Hit Class: An interesting example as his base critical rate is actually one of the lowest in the game, however most of the attacks he regularly uses for bossing and mobbing in 4th job ignore the critical rate and always hit criticals.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Downplayed. He assisted the Black Mage in defeating Rhinne, the Transcendence of Time. Given how Arkarium emphasized this during the Demon's backstory, however, it is implied that the Black Mage would not have defeated her if not for the Demon's efforts.
- Lightning Bruiser: The defense of a Paladin, the attacking speed of an Aran, unrivaled map mobility due to his Not Quite Flight, virtually no reliance on potions due to a passive and active Life Drain skill, and hits like a tank. His only apparent flaws are a shorter attacking range than most other classes, his HP loss from using certain skills, and that mana potions have absolutely no use.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Just look at him!
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Demon Slayer has his own, special shield, the Demon Aegis, that levels up with each job advancement. As of third job advancement, he gains a passive skill called "Possessed Aegis" that will cause the shield to automatically deflect attacks a certain percentage of the time.
- Magikarp Power: Raising a Demon Slayer up can be slow going as they'll have a hard time doing damage and keeping their Demon Force up until Hyper Skills hit; with Blue Blood giving a huge damage boost with 50% uptime and then Cerberus Chomp having only a 5 second cooldown that also recovers 50 Demon Force whenever its used, which also accelerates the cooldown on Blue Blood. Once you have access to both of these things, it's possible to keep the Blue Blood buff up 100% of the time, and almost impossible to be short on Demon Force.
Demon Avenger
An alternate path of the Demon. Unlike his Slayer counterpart, the Demon Avenger does not have Demon Force, only HP. In fact, the Demon Avenger breaks the usual method of distributing AP by making HP his main stat. All his skills use HP, and his damage is determined by the current HP he has. The Demon Avenger also uses the Exceed system, where his main attack skills get more powerful with each use, but consume more HP if used too much. The Demon Avenger also uses a special weapon, the Desperado, and retains the flight abilities of his Slayer counterpart.
The Demon Avenger was released during the Unlimited update.
Tropes associated with Demon Avenger:
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Has so much HP he can tank attacks meant to be one hit kills, but once he hits the HP cap, players will have a hard time increasing his damage potential past that. Eventually partially addressed, allowing his range to continue scaling up off of his actual AP investment in HP, allowing him to continue growing in power even if he already has enough +%HP to be at the cap.
- Using HP as a resource has become a liability in certain endgame bosses where any healing at all is severely restricted, meaning Demon Avenger can't use their built in HP restoration and thus can't fight effectively. Eventually partially addressed by giving him a 90% discount on the cost of his skills in these boss fights, which helps prevent him from having to run on empty for too long before the opening to recover at full effectiveness arises.
- BFS: Desperados are large enough to be two-handed swords, but are used one-handed.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Desperados. They are bladed weapons with pointed tips, but the game does not register them as swords. Case in point: they have their own set of 10%, 60% and 100% scrolls.
- Cool Sword: Uses the Desperado, a BFS with an energy blade, rather than axes or blunt weapons.
- Discard and Draw: After his Level Drain, a Demon Avenger is a Demon who decided to learn new powers instead of trying to rebuild their old ones.
- Life Drain: Gets a passive skill in his first job that recovers a percentage of of his max HP.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: No other class uses HP as their main stat. This choice has so many Awesome, but Impractical implications in a game where all the mechanics assume one of the other four primary stats are the primary means of giving power that Avenger has been the target of many necessary rebalances and changes to keep his uniqueness, but still allow him to be competitive with other classes.
- Mystical White Hair: In contrast with the Slayer retaining the original purple.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Demon doesn't seem to need to do anything special to become an Avenger, it (yes, even his hair suddenly going white) simply happens shortly after making the choice.
- Out of Focus: Due to Demon Slayer being considered the canon class the Demon takes, Avenger gets very little exposure in story content. Even promotional videos that go out of their way to show every single class in the game that exists at the time skip showing Demon Avenger because he's the same person as Demon Slayer and it doesn't actually make lore sense to have both appear.
- Overdrive: The Exceed system makes skills more powerful if you use them repeatedly, but in exchange, they begin to drain your HP faster.
- Shield Bash: Shield Charge does this and then throws in spikes growing out of the shield in the end for good measure.
- Sticks to the Back: The Desperado when Demon Avenger is not using it.
- Throwing Your Shield Always Works: Nether Shield throws two magical shields that home in on enemies.
Xenon
Xenon
Voiced by: Jeong Jae-heon (Korean, male), Yeo Min-jeong (Korean, female), Lucien Dodge (English, male), Ryuichi Kijima (Japanese, male), Ayumi Tsuji (Japanese, female)
A cyborg developed by the Black Wings' scientist, Gelimer, to be the ultimate weapon. Was Childhood Friends with with the Resistance leaders until he was kidnapped, memory-wiped, and turned into a cyborg. After a failed Resistance attack that leads to Claudine's capture and Xenon's encounter with her, Xenon realizes that his memories were wiped. He then frees Claudine, turns against Gelimer, and joins the Resistance in hopes of recovering his lost memories. Although he gains their trust, he is forced to leave them after learning that Beryl, a fellow cyborg loyal to Gelimer, can sense his presence and would find out about the existence of the Resistance if he stayed with them. He later joins an undercover organization associated with The Resistance, called Veritas, that helps him hide his presence by giving him signal jammers to plant across Maple World.
Gameplay-wise, Xenon counts as both a Thief and a Pirate when equipping armor, uses an energy blade, and averts the regular Min-Maxing strategy of of dumping all of ones points into a single main stat by having three main stats. Xenon also uses the Surplus Supply system, where he can charge up energy to buff his stats or use special skills, and the Multi Mode Linker, where he can change his some of his skills into one of three modes, changing the range, power, and effect of the skill.
Xenon was released during the Unlimited update.—
Tropes associated with Xenon:
- BFG: Mecha Purge: Snipe: He has Roo-D pull out an enormous cannon (that's apparently a sniper rifle) which he uses to blast a single target for massive damage. This is not even taking into account that it's powered by a particle accelerator. His fifth job skill, Mega Smasher, completely eclipses this, attaching what amounts to tank to Xenon's arm that fires a massive beam twice as large as Xenon is tall and reaching halfway across the screen for a maximum of five seconds, dealing massive damage to whatever schmuck is in his crosshairs.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Pinpoint Salvo ability, which allows Xenon to spend one unit of Surplus Energy to fire missiles at enemies, which he can even do while also in the middle of other attack skills, allowing him to fire off what amounts to a Macross Missile Massacre if he holds down the skill key. However, those same energy units also give Xenon damage buffs and the missiles themselves do pitiful damage, so it's more effective to save his Surplus Energy for powering himself up.
- Later reworked to become a passive that activates as Xenon attacks
- Blade Spam: Beam Dance has him swinging his blade around in all directions, slicing apart any foes that get close with lots and lots of hits.
- Childhood Friend: To all of the Resistance Instructors, having played Mesorangers with them since he was little.
- The Comically Serious: On several occasions. In the lead-in quest to Gold Beach, Professor Dreamboat has to try really hard to explain to him what a vacation is and how someone is supposed to relax.
- Cringe Comedy: Several quests centered around him interacting with the Resistance job instructors, who used to be childhood friends of his. Of particular note is the gift-giving quest, in which he gets advice from the members of Veritas (who don't know the Resistance instructors) and the results are simultaneously hilarious and painful. Though, most of the instructors are understanding that he's trying.
- Cyborg: The strongest one of the lot and superior to the previous model, Beryl, to the point that many of Gelimer's later robots are based on him.
- Electronic Eyes: The bright color of his irises and the lines leading inward certainly suggest this. In his character trailer, his pupil briefly fills with static when Gelimer tries to hijack him.
- Explosive Overclocking: OOparts Code and Overload Mode invoke this, with the former releasing Xenon's safety limiters to bolster his damage, with Xenon himself admitting that he isn't sure what inputting this code will do to him. The latter releases the limiters on his energy core, increasing his damage output and doubling his maximum energy as well as the rate at which his Surplus Energy recharges, but rapidly draining his MP and preventing him from restoring it. Overload Mode can even do damage to nearby enemies as it quite literally explosively overclocks.
- Expy: Besides the canonical black hair appearance, and alternate creation look for male and female Xenon are Lotus and Orchid models respectively, making them look similar to them but slightly off model, like someone tried to create their own replicas of them.
- Flight: Not just the Demon-style flight where he can just do cool jumps or glide, he can actually fly around the map and freely attack with missiles. However, this is only temporary.
- Future Spandex: His starting outfit.
- Gratuitous Latin: Veritas is Latin for truth. Given the fact that they help Xenon piece together his identity, his memories, and his place in the world, it's pretty fitting.
- Hammerspace: Has inventory space just like the other classes, but while many of the other classes are shown with pouches or bags, or could logically have pockets, Xenon has virtually nowhere to store all the potions, monster bits, etc. that he picks up.
- Hard Light: His Manifest Projector skill creates a hologram that copies all of Xenon's attacks for reduced damage, increasing the number of hits he deals and his overall damage.
- Have We Met Yet?: Upon meeting Claudine again, Xenon begins to get very hazy recollections of his past.
- Quest for Identity: His motivation for joining the Resistance.
- Kill Sat: His Hyper Skill, Orbital Cataclysm invokes this.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Realizing this has happened is what starts Xenon's Heel–Face Turn.
- Laser Blade: The "whip" of his part is made of a light blue/yellow energy, most likely plasma.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: He's the only class in the game that counts as being two jobs; both Pirate and Thief. As a result he is also the only class in the game that has multiple main stats; Strength, Dexterity and Luck all have equal weight in determining his damage output.
- Min-Maxing: Averts this by having three main stats instead of just one like all the other classes. He gets a skill each job that enforces this by giving bonuses for having a certain amount in each stat and another for having all three stats at that amount.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: A cyborg who counts as both a Thief (ninja) and a Pirate class Adventurere.
- Older Than They Look: He was a child at the same time as the Resistance instructors, who are all adults and in one case a medical doctor, so he has to be in his twenties at the least despite looking no older than his early-mid teens.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Elex comments that he's very short, and in a later quest, an option is discussed for masking his pulse that would weigh several tons. Xenon expresses confidence he could carry it, but the plan is axed because the resulting device would be the size of a two-story building.
- Restraining Bolt: Gelimer used a special control chip to keep Xenon's memories foggy and allow him to take control whenever necessary. After resisting its effects and escaping Gelimer's hideout, Xenon had it ripped out to keep himself from ever falling under Gelimer's influence again. This had the side effect of making him lose his powers, forcing him to regain them through training.
- Robot Dog: Roo-D, though she's actually supposed to be a rabbit, and is more of a job instructor than a pet. In the 4th job, she can help you with the Purge Lob Masquerade skill.
- Ship Tease: With Claudine. His memory is first jogged when he sees the knife Claudine wanted to give him when they were children, and one of the last remnants of his past was a picture of him sharing lunch with Claudine on a bench.
- Super-Persistent Predator: Early in his questline, fellow Xenoroid Beryl hunts him down through several towns by tracking his 'pulse', and his only option is to move to a different town before she arrives. Later, use of signal scrambling technology resolves this issue.
- Super Prototype: To legions of other Xenoroids during the final act of Black Heaven.
- Swiss-Army Weapon: The Multi Mode Linker allows him to change some of his skills into one of three different modes. That wide area slash can turn into a downward shot. That massive sniper rifle can turn into a bomb raid.
- A Taste of Power: His tutorial consists of him ripping a clone of Von Leon, a powerful Black Mage Commander, to shreds with his Beam Dance technique, dealing millions of damage per hit. After ripping out the control chip that allowed Gelimer to manipulate him, Xenon loses his powers, forcing him to regain them from the ground up.
- Tron Lines: His starting equipment.
- Unusual Ears: During his release event, players could get a 'Xenon Cap' that was a pair of equippable cybernetic cat ears.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Subverted. Xenon will remark several times that people are staring at him, to which his superior responds fairly indifferently.Professor Dreamboat: You're a walking lightshow, kid. Get used to it.
- Also, before you get to Verne Mine, a setting in which you could walk right past Gelimer, Xenon is given a 'disguise module' so that the Black Wings won't recognize him. It's more or less a Hand Wave, because his appearance doesn't change.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: Was kidnapped as a child by the Black Wings and forcibly converted into a cyborg and had his memories stripped away one-by-one, rendering him a complete stranger to his childhood friends.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Was adorable as a kid. Since then, was changed so much (and had been gone so long) that none of his childhood friends recognized him at first.
- Useless Useful Spell: Liberty Boosters allows Xenon to fly completely freely for the next thirty seconds. This is amazingly helpful and useful for scaling taller maps and is still useful for quickly getting across longer maps. However, Xenon can't use any of his skills other than the pitifully weak Pinpoint Salvo while this is in use, making it useless for combat.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Xenon's 5th job skill, Mega Smasher.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: He emotionally shut down during the years he spent with Gelimer. While he starts feeling again early in his questline, he has a lot of issues understanding said feelings because he's horrendously out of practice.
- Whip Sword: And because that wasn't enough, the whip section is a laser.
Region Exclusive Characters
In General
Region Exclusive Characters
Doesn't it feel great to be different? Some servers in MapleStory have their own, unique characters. So far, none of them really fit in with the established class hierarchy, so they are listed here. Popular classes often find their way into other regional versions, although so far none of them have been brought to the original Korean version. At the moment, all region-exclusive character classes share the same level cap as other character classes.
Tropes Associated With All of Them
- Black Sheep: Each of them is wildly different from others of the same Job, each also being the only member of their Type. The fact that they literally aren't developed by the core game team also means they tend to get balanced differently and more inconsistently from the rest of the classes in the game.
- Hero of Another Story: Because of the fact that they just plain won't ever see the light in some countries, they're never involved in the overarching plot of the game and their appearances are regulated to events and cameos, which are few and far between.
- Hidden Character: Sort of. When available for character creation, it's only for a limited time.
- Remember the New Guy?: Averted for the Stellar Detectives event. Due to inevitably showing up in countries where they aren't available (i.e Zen in GMS) the story presents them like they're completely new characters. Ironically, most of the classes ended up being removed, which left the deleted classes as NPCs in the Stellar Detectives story.
Dragon Warrior/ZEN
Dragon Warrior/ZEN
The Dragon Warrior was a character class originally released in China and Taiwan's servers as a region-exclusive Pirate class, but it was also made available for creation in MapleSEA (as ZEN) for a short time. He is the son of a general and is heavily inspired by martial arts and uses guns and knuckles as his weapons. They received some of the same flak as Jett for being added as a supposed replacement for the rebalancing of the Pirate classes (as many of the skills are very similar to the revamped Pirate skills from KMS), but it is unknown whether that is true.
Eventually, on February 24, 2021, the Zen class was discontinued. In CMS and TMS, all Zen characters were converted to the new Mo Xuan class, but in MapleSEA, all existing Zens were given the option of converting to an Explorer Pirate class or being permanently deleted.
Tropes associated with the Dragon Warrior:
- Gun Fu: A prime offender, with the earliest versions of the class being indistinguishable from an explorer Pirate that happens to have both Corsair and Buccanner skills.
- One-Gender Race: The Stellar Detectives event confirms that Zen is canonically male.
- Out of Focus: Was not included in the 4th V update of Awake and in fact Zen creation was disabled in Sea as of that update. Eventually, the class was removed, having been replaced with the Mo Xuan class in CMS and TMS. Interestingly, the Zen character still canonically exists in GMS (which has never made Zen a playable class) as an NPC in Stellar Detectives.
- Suddenly Shouting: He regularly alternates between normal syntax and ALL CAPS during Stellar Detectives.
- You Killed My Father: His story involves hunting down the emperor of his homeland in quest to avenge his father.
Jett
Jett
Jett was a job released in GMS as a region-exclusive Pirate class. She is a fugitive bounty hunter from space accused of killing the King of the Planet Cerberus and uses a gun as her primary weapon. Jett received some of the same flak as the Dragon Warrior for being added as a supposed replacement for the rebalancing of the Pirate classes (as many of the skills are very similar to the revamped Pirate skills from KMS); this was disproved after the revamped Pirate skills were added to GMS following her release.
Not unlike its counterpart Zen, the class was phased out, with creation disabled on April 27, 2023, and all Jetts were deleted sometime in early 2024.
Tropes associated with Jett:
- Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: Jett's Core. Losing most of it causes her to drop in power. She fully reassembles it upon reaching her fourth job.
- And the Adventure Continues: The send-off for the class before its deletion ends Jett's story this way. Jett is contacted by the late Cerberus king's son, who lost the throne and has since watched his home suffer from civil wars and raids by space pirates. Even though Jett's innocence can't be proven and she is still a fugitive, the son still believes in her and wants her to come back and save Cerberus. The scene ends with Jett taking off into space, vowing to Burke's spirit that she will defend their home.
- Cowboy: A space cowboy at that.
- Critical Hit Class: Jett's base Critical Hit rate in her fourth job is 55%. This can be increased to 70% if there are 20 SP in the Collateral Damage passive skill, making her critical hit rate second only to Bishops.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: As of currently, she manages to be this even moreso than Mercedes, due to having very low damage scalings to her multihit skills. Unfortunately, this has the effect of branding her as one of the worst classes in terms of damage in the entire game, even lower than Bishops. Sure, you could make her an incredible damage dealer, but that requires an astronomical amount of money.
- Double Jump: Has a triple jump similar to Angelic Buster.
- Future Spandex: The outfit she starts out with. It even has Tron Lines on it.
- Glass Cannon: Like the Gunslinger, Jett has incredible offensive potential, but has issues taking damage.
- Human Aliens: Despite being from another planet, she looks like everyone else on Maple World. If not for Kyrin seeing her crash land, she'd probably have been able to pass herself off as a Mapler.
- More Dakka: Starting with the standard-issue Double Shot in her first job, which is then supplemented by Triple Fire in her second job, then moving up to Starforce Salvo in her fourth job.
- Phlebotinum-Handling Requirements: Jett's Core is a family heirloom whose immense powers can only be utilised by someone from her family line.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For Zen. Even Jett's recent revamp is mostly identical to a revamp Zen had earlier.
- In Taiwan's Maplestory, you can even switch between Jett and Zen on the same character.
- One-Gender Race: Despite usually being referred to in official release information as female, both genders of the class were available for creation.
Hayato
Anegasaki Hayato
Hayato was originally one of the two Sengoku character classes released exclusively in JMS, as a region-exclusive Warrior class, but was also added to GMS during the Mark of Honor update. Highly influenced by the Sengoku era, he wields a unique weapon to himself: Katanas. His playstyle revolves mostly around chaining attacks quickly.
Tropes associated with Hayato:
- Achilles' Heel: Since Hayato's basic attack is categorized as a MP-consuming skill, magic and physical resistance at the same time can end up hindering his damage output.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Standard for a Warrior class.
- Awesome, but Impractical: As flashy and powerful as Hayato's final skills are, they take a terribly long time to charge up and you're probably better off using the massive damage, attack speed, and critical hit bonus you get from holding the charge instead.
- 5th job mitigates this with Battoujutsu Zankou, which can quickly restore the sword meter spent, but the final skills are still completely overshadowed by Iaijutsu Phantom Blade, which spends the sword meter to apply much more powerful buffs.
- Blade Spam: Sanrenzan and Blade Flash are powerful and rapid sequence attacks which as mentioned in the Spam Attack entry, encourages the palyer to Button Mash whenever possible for maximum damage. Shinsoku also qualifies, having been reworked into a keydown skill like Xenon's Beam Dance. Hitokiri Hundred Strike unleashes sword strikes all over the screen and leaving most mooks dead on contact.
- Combos: Nearly every attack Hayato has can be comboed into another one. Since his moves are so mobile and he lacks a double jump, this was his primary means of fast travel. This is less prevalent with Hayato's new skills post-revamp, but many of his returning skills can still be chained together. One of his new skills also tries to reinforce this by chaining all eight skills together one after the other, but it's so awkward that it's generally preferred to use them manually.
- Critical Hit Class: Many of the Hayato's abilities can critically hit for several times, and one ability allows them to even heal off of any successful critical hits as a result. Issen or (Hitokiri Strike in GMS) is an instant kill attack against mooks that also raises his critical hit rate by upwards of 45%! His new Quick Draw mode post-revamp also ramps up his critical hit by up to 50% with a full meter, meaning he can have 100% critical chance without a single additional item! Of course, this is only useful for bossing since it reduces the number of targets any of his skills can hit to 1.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts / Spam Attack: The Sanrenzan attack, which grows stronger with each stage, encouraging players to mash the button whenever possible.
- Dimensional Traveler: Originally from ancient Japan, brought to Maple World due to Oda Nobunaga forming a cross-dimensional pact with the Black Mage.
- Double Jump: Didn't used to have one, but post revamp he somewhat rarely for a warrior gets a triple jump in the form of Battoujutsu Leap, albeit it is replaced with a Flash Step in Quick Draw stance.
- Flash Step: HOLY SHIT. Vorpal Blade, Dankuusen, Issen... Post-revamp he also has a double jump and a forward dash like Zero and Aran.
- Gender Swap: The new promotional art for the reworked Sengoku characters features a female Hayato and a male Kanna.
-
Good Bad Bugs: It was one possible to completely remove the cooldown on Hitokiri Strike. Because of the short stun on enemies it applied to achieve the Single-Stroke Battle effect, this means one could actually trap even most bosses in a constant stunlock by spamming Hitokiri Strike. - Iaijutsu Practitioner: Explicitly refers to his swordplay as Battoujutsu (the art of drawing a sword) and is present in his skills.
- Implausible Fencing Powers: He somehow slashes multiple times in a cross shape with a katana and performs all kinds of flash steps without magic, not to mention the fact that the sword is never seen leaving its sheath post 3rd Job.
- Katanas Are Just Better: The only person in the game to use one.
- Lightning Bruiser: Hayato is fast on the field, and a good amount of skills rely on quickly hitting the target with high-power attacks.
- Limit Break: His ultimate skills, Summer Rain and the new Hitokiri Hundred Strike, work this way post-revamp. You have to fill up a meter by killing monsters (5 Sword Energy per monster) until it reaches its max at 1000. Afterward the incredible flashy attack that follows is able to basically wipe out anything that is not considered a boss or a mini-boss around your level in a single hit.
- One-Gender Race: Was gender locked to male-only in his original JMS debut, while GMS added a female option. Hayato's major revamp then came with an "official" female design for all versions.
- Razor Wind: Almost every skill has this in some form.
- Samurai: Duh.
- Stance System: Battojutsu Stance used to ramp up his damage at the cost of constantly draining mana. Post-revamp it now puts all of his mobbing skills into his standard form while the Battojutsu Stance (renamed Quick Draw) changes Sanrenzan into a powerful single-target Blade Flash for bossing.
- Single-Stroke Battle: The Hitokiri Strike is this.
- Super Move Portrait Attack: Summer Rain.
Kanna
Ayanokouji Kanna
Kanna was originally one of the two Sengoku character classes released exclusively in JMS, as a region-exclusive Magician class, but was also added to GMS during the Mark of Honor update. Highly influenced by the Sengoku era, she wields a unique weapon to herself; a fan. She also uses her fox familiar to fight. Her playstyle revolves around summoning spirits and transforming her familiar.
Tropes associated with Kanna:
- Animal Companion: A talking fox named Haku.
- Boring, but Practical: Like Battle Mages, their primary attacking skill remains essentially the same for all 4 jobs.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Many of her skills of dark motifs and she summons youkai to fight for her, but she's ultimately very much a righteous person.
- Dimensional Traveler: Originally from ancient Japan, brought to Maple World due to Oda Nobunaga forming a cross-dimensional pact with the Black Mage.
- Familiar: Her familiar and partner Haku, an adorable little fox that serves as a mount, a buffer (in human form), and the catalyst for many of her most powerful skills. He is a bit irritating and snarky at times though.
- Gender Swap: The new promotional art for the reworked Sengoku characters features a female Hayato and a male Kanna.
- Improbable Weapon User: A fan. More justified than most since she primarily uses it as a medium for her spells rather than hitting people with it (but she can if you use the basic attack button)
- Historical In-Joke: Oda Nobunaga is the Big Bad for the Zipangu characters. Who knew?
- One-Gender Race: Was gender locked to female-only in her original JMS debut, while GMS added a male option. Kanna's major revamp then came with an "official" male design for all versions.
- Squishy Wizard: Inevitable as a mage without Magic Guard. Although she does have a handful of defensive buffs to make up for it, they don't hold up under heavy pressure. She covers this by 3rd job, which gives her a skill that heals her for 5% of her Max Health whenever she kills a monster, meaning that as long as she keeps slaughtering monsters she'll be topped up the whole time.
- Summon Magic: Most of her skills are this, summoning youkai she's contracted with to attack her opponents and cause a variety of effects. Heck, one of her skills is called Kishin Shoukan (Demon Summoning).
- Super Move Portrait Attack: Nine-Tailed Fury.
- Tsundere: Implied to have a crush on Naotsugu but its too obsessed with her rivalry with him to make due on it, reprimanding him harshly when they meet even though he holds her in high esteem.
Ayame
Ayame
Tropes associated with Ayame:
- Bayonet Ya: Her weapon is a rifle with a bayonet on the end, her basic attack pattern is to slash with it and follow up with a shot.
- Guest-Star Party Member: She's only usable in the Hieizan Temple dungeon.
- Kryptonite Is Everywhere: The Party prequest for the Princess No expedition makes the party leader to be Ayame and makes you fight enemies tailor specifically designed to counter her abilities to prevent it from being soloable.
- Super Move Portrait Attack: Iron Flower Gun - Mysterious Burst.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill / Purposefully Overpowered: Since she is only usable in the theme dungeon, her super move deals an amazing 2000% damage per shot at a very high rate of fire.
Beast Tamer
Beast Tamer
Beast Tamer was a Magician class exclusive to JMS, CMS, TMS, and GMS. Chase is a girl with animal ears and a tail hailing from the Arboren region of Dawnveil. Having been raised on stories of the five Heroes of Maple World, Chase aspires to become a great hero herself with the help of the Critter Champs, four powerful talking animals who fight by her side: Fort the Bear, Lai the Snow Leopard, Eka the Hawk and Arby the Cat.
In early 2024, Beast Tamer will be retired and replaced with a new class called Lynn.
Tropes associated with Beast Tamer:
- Alpha Bitch: Eka does not like to be bossed around.
- Ascended Fanboy: She grew up admiring the Maple heroes, and ends up joining the Maple Alliance when Evan invites her.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: At times.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Fort seems to be this.
- Combination Attack: As you might imagine, her hyper attack and V skills involve all four Critter Champs working together;
- Group Bear Blaster: Eka loads Fort into a cannon conjured by Arby, which Lai then fires to do heavy damage covering the entire map
- The Greatest Show on Maple World is Coming!: Each non active animal dresses up in circus attire and fireworks passively attack while Beast Tamer is free to act. In addition, whenever stance is changed during this, the animal that switches in does a special attack.
- Cub Cavalry: Summons sets of four critter cubs that all work together to perform various combination attacks across the map, such as all four of them throwing food, piloting a pirate ship, or Mini Eka spinning the other three in a wheel.
- Aerial Relief: The Champs load up into a giant plane held up by Fort and attack enemies from it finishing up with Fort throwing the plane.
- Competitive Balance: Along with Zero, Beast Tamer is one of two classes whose character creation is seasonally restricted in order to limit the number of Beast Tamers running around. Unlike Zero, there are no other restrictions to creating one as long as you're in a character creation event period.
- Corralling Vacuum: Fort's Deep Breath (and its upgrade, Really Deep Breath) complement his low mobility, high damage playstyle with one of the widest ranges for that kind of skill in the game.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Leopard Mode having all the mobility mobbing means Fort's bossing ability comes with extremely stationary attacks that pin Beast Tamer to where she is for a decent delay, in a game like Maplestory where high end bossing necessitates good mobility to avoid one hit kill attacks. Hawk mode invokes this deliberately in its focus on high mobility to the cost of barely any combat skills, which generally means it gets passed on entirely for the other stances.
- The Pathfinder update rebalances Beast Tamer and smooths this all out with enough extra damage all around that all four animals can, at the very least, do viable damage.
- Double Jump: As a shared beginner skill for Beast Tamer, but Hawk mode can enhance it into a triple jump among other things.
- Emergent Gameplay: It was possible to exploit stance changes to keep buffs from animals active on other animals, but the Rise update removed that exploit and simultaneously canonized it as their new level 190 hyper skill: to utilize all the passives and buffs of all their stances at once.
- Fartillery: Fort's Majestic Trumpets, with a bit of Playing with Fire.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Arby's primary attacking skill involves throwing the Critter Champs at enemies.
- Jerkass: Eka... Or is she?
- Loophole Abuse: Some effects stay when changing modes, such as Purr Zone, allowing her to heal her party while attacking. Alternatively, you can switch to cat mode when the boss is almost dead for an increase in drop rate and EXP!
- Magikarp Power:
- "All SP+" bonuses (which have mostly become worthless in modern Maple Story due to how quickly classes gain SP) find a niche use with Beast Tamer, who needs all the SP she can get. Stacking enough all SP bonuses can make the difference between Beast Tamer only being able to master two animals to being able to master three animals.
- Hawk mode tends to be written off due to its low damage, and the fact that it doesn't even start showing its full combat potential until the player is almost fully invested into the skill branch, but its high mobility and wide area of attack means a Beast Tamer that puts the extra work into Hawk to make it work will be rewarded with map clearing that surpasses even what Leopard mode is capable of.
- Master of None: Her stances are either not as good as an equivalent regular class is, or a little too overspecialized for their own good, never mind the fact that Beast Tamer doesn't even get enough SP to go around for all of them, so she is limited to either being proficient with 1-2 animals or being bad at 3-4.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Her Stance System is so much like having four completely different classes at once (as opposed to say Xenon or Dawn Warrior who can simply reconfigure their skills), each stance has its own hotkey loadout!
- Min-Maxing: With not enough points for all animals, it's generally accepted that Fort and Arby have the best end-game applications.
- Point Build System: With over 70 skills divided among the four animals, Beast Tamer is the closest thing Maple Story has to a build system, as once she stops getting SP at level 200, there's not enough SP for mastering all four animals. The Destiny update helps out by allowing her to continue gaining SP until level 250, but it will still take quite a while to master multiple animals at that rate, and the extra 150 SP still isn't enough to fully master all the skills.
- The Red Mage: Her stance system allows her to serve a variety of roles, but only one at a time.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: All four animals have some skill that features a tiny version of themselves in some way.
- Squishy Wizard: Not only is she a mage without magic guard, but her alternatives to that are different with each stance, some less effective than others. The Pathfinder update adds a universal damage mitigation to Beast Tamer, which combined with the stance alternatives, significantly aid in improving her survivability.
- Stance System: Emphasized with each of the four animals having their own and hotkey loadouts and passive skills that are only in effect when they are active.
- Super Move Portrait Attack: Each skill at the bottom of an animal's tree is one of these, as is the hyper attack and all of her 5th job skills.
- Skill Scores and Perks: Enforcing the build analogy, Beast Tamer's skill page can be arranged in a tree view and certain point investments in an animal are required before you can move on to the next skill in the tree.
- You Will Not Evade Me: To help with his severe lack of mobility, Fort's Deep Breathing and Really Deep Breathing skills can draw mobs in from both directions at an impressive range.
- You Won't Like Me When I'm Angry: Fort is fairly easygoing but his strongest skills have him show anger; his ultimate shows him losing his temper at a tea party and flipping the table, doing heavy damage to everything in the area.
Mo Xuan
Mo Xuan
Mo Xuan is a Pirate job of Wu Shen character class. He uses Wushu Fist as a primary weapon, and Fist Ring as a secondary weapon.
Currently TMS and CMS exclusive job, as a replacement of Zen above.
Lynn
Lynn
A forest child who fights alongside animals, as a replacement for Beast Tamer above.
- Expy: Unlike Zen to Mo Xuan, Lynn is effectively a major revamp to Beast Tamer in the form of a new character; still wielding various animals, with the only differences being the Snow Leopard is now a Wolf, and the Cat's abilities are now Lynn's own.
