With PA confirming that potentially large reworks are on our horizons I'm going to redo the last thread and try to make a better case as well as cover more.

Short and sweet summary: We need a harder pass this time. The changes we got recently didn't actually address any of his core problems and simply increasing his damage numbers is little more than a bandaid

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert at this game nor will I even claim to know the class better than most, especially PvP which I'm terrible at. I’ve never even played Succession so that’s an area that I can’t even begin to cover.  So this post isn't an objective look at the class and is merely my personal opinion based on my experience and opinions/discussions that I've had with other players or have seen take place about Musa. That said though, since it seems hardly any Musas are making an effort to voice their opinions on the forums so I thought that there’s no reason why I can’t give it a shot. However, as is the point of the forums, I’m open to discussion about anything I say so feel free to refute me if you believe I’ve made an error in representing the class.


PVE: This is probably the largest point of distress for most Musa players as it’s well known that Musa is towards the bottom end of the PvE scale. His PvE pass he received might’ve perhaps raised him up from being considered one of the top 3 worst grinding classes in BDO, however it seems that all he has done is gone from one of the worst to being mediocre or average at best. As it stands it’s still a common thing for there to be a large gap in trash loot per hour when comparing Musa to what is considered by players to be the good classes. Even if the competing class is being handled by someone who is inefficient, against a Musa who is maximizing his potential, the gap can still be very large. The gap between 2 skilled players is even larger. I’ve seen instances where a skilled Succession Striker was making almost as much trash loot as a Musa who had 18 more AP than him at an end game location. While Succession Striker is a bit of an outlier with his current power, the comparisons between Musa and other top tier classes aren’t particularly favorable either. The reasons as to why this is the case is something I’ll try my best to discuss. This is based off of my experience with the class as well as a lot of hearing what others have had to say over the years. 

Disclaimer: Feel free to skip to the bottom of this post for my summary of things. Before I knew it this turned into close to 6000 words so I understand not reading it or skimming through it.

Cooldowns: For a class with no particularly strong features and rather average damage, Musa has a lot of strangely large cooldowns. Not only do these cooldowns directly affect his DPS but it also affects other aspects of grinding like pulling mobs.

There are several examples of long cooldowns that disrupt his kit or just don’t make sense but I’ll simply talk about these for now. Projection’s Flow: Extra Credit, Backflow, Crust Crusher, and Crust Crusher’s Flow: Foul Play, and Musa Resolve.

Extra credit is a flow of Projection that effectively doubles the damage of the skill by copying it.The problem here is that Projection is for whatever reason a summon so it’s subjected to the AP cap that all summons get. It does terrible damage, to say the least. Yet for some reason Extra Credit is on a whopper of a 12 second cooldown. Now this wouldn’t be worth mentioning if it wasn’t for the fact that Projection itself is only 7 seconds. So the flow of an ability that simply copies the damage of a very low damage skill is almost double that of the actual skill itself. This isn’t actually much of a loss to the kit itself but an example of his weird cooldowns.

Backflow is more detrimental to the kit. The damage is good and it has super armor. Nothing overly amazing but it is actually useful. This one also shares a 12 second cooldown for some reason. Considering what most classes can get for protected damage this cooldown is definitely excessive for what it gives.

Then comes the biggest problem of all which is Crust Crusher + Foul Play. This ability is on a Crushing 17 second cooldown. Without a doubt this one is definitely a cornerstone of the kit. The ability and its flow combined make the largest damage option Musa has available to him. However considering his position on the power scale in PvE, and the fact the only good thing is its damage, 17 seconds is far too large. It’s Frontal Guard is notorious for inconsistency and the animation is long. Some of the particularly strong classes get even more damage overall on spammable cooldowns while this is really Musa’s only outstanding damage source in his entire kit.

To put this into a perspective that’s easier to visualize, let's assume I’m trying to do full rotations. I do a full rotation including my pre buffs and don’t even use my 10% attack speed buff which would increase the cooldown gap.

Let's assume most Musa combos would follow the formula of Prebuffs>Dashslash and Eradicate> and then pure damage. Depending on how much filler you put into the combo by the time you repeat your second combo you’ll still have about 3 or more seconds until Backflow and Extra Credit(both 12 seconds), and well over 7 or more until Crust Crusher and Foul Play.

The normal and logical solution is to fill in the combo with more abilities. The problem with Musa is that we have no good filler. At all. Which is why very often in between skills or as a finisher people just spam Crosscut and Twister as they’re all we’ve got for quick damage, even if it’s low. Projection is already used in the main combo but has low damage. Our Rabam Storm Slash has decent damage on par with our awakening skills but has a long animation, is unprotected, and a 15 second cooldown. The newly buffed Nemesis Slash has a bit lower damage but a 20 second cooldown, is unprotected, and a long animation. Blooming, which is an iconic skill on Musa, has damage on the lower end but is still high enough to be considered, however it still has a 15 second cooldown, is unprotected, and has a long animation.

By this point I think you’ll notice a pattern here.

And I still have one more topic to cover as far as cooldowns are concerned which is pulling mobs. As of right now Musa has some pretty darn bad pulling capabilities. If we take a look at a golden standard for pulling such as Warrior’s ground roar (god I love that ability) Musa’s Musa Resolve is lacking in every possible way. Musa Resolve has: Considerably less range, costs 150 stamina, is a full AOE circle centered around the character which prevents more precise control, and is on a whopper of a 20 second cooldown. This ability is weird because it’s both a PvE and PvP ability which is probably 1 reason for the strangely high cooldown. Despite only dealing damage in PvE so that it can pull it has an AOE stun that affects everything. Not only is 20 seconds horrendous for an unprotected stun as far as PvP is concerned, a stun on a pull ability for PvE is terrible if you can potentially stun the mobs and delay the pull. And this is on a whole 20 second cooldown. Musa has a second ability which is almost identical which is a rabam skill called Musa Spirit. It functions exactly the same however it lacks the stun, has a shorter range, and shares the same cooldown. Instead it grants 450 HP and a crit rate and magic DP buff. I don’t really believe the buffs are on a level that justifies the cooldown but it’s fine for now.

Buffs, Debuffs, and Modifiers: This section will likely be shorter as it’s pretty straight forward. One of the major factors that goes into the strength of a class is the buffs and debuffs that are available through their kit as well as the modifiers attached to those skills like Accuracy and Crit. For instance, Guardian is considered strong which is for many different reasons, but a simple one is that this class has some seriously juicy buffs and stats. Did you know that with a practically permanent +50% crit rate, high innate crit rate on all of her skills, and character crit rate that Guardian can effortlessly reach 100% crit rate at all times? On top of this she even has a +crit damage buff which is pretty darn strong when everything crits. Then she has things like +20 AP, +9% Accuracy, and +20% Attack speed as part of her buff rotation.
This isn’t to say she’s broken as she still pales in comparison to something like Striker, but next to something that is considered “strong” like Guardian Musa has very little and something like these make it easy to see why. I will admit I was happy that we got that new skill with the +Accuracy buff. However we have a rather weak attack speed buff, a -15 DP debuff when most classes have 20 or above to rely on, no such damage modifying buffs like crit damage or +AP, ect. And then there are even some pretty darn useful debuffs that other classes have that we don’t. For instance we could definitely use a solid -Evasion debuff for both mobs and players considering our history with accuracy problems. Or a -AP Debuff like Guardian has.

There’s only so much that can actually be said besides simply we don’t have good buffs, so I’ll end this section here.

Animations: I already mentioned it in the cooldowns but another problem that causes issues are our animations. Very long, more than a few that just lock you in place, some that just don’t even combo into anything properly, and then many bad hitboxes. For examples of long animations we can look at any of the Rising Storm abilities, then some not so terrible ones like Below The Belt, and God help anyone who uses either of the Nemesis Slash abilities. Some classes can almost go as far as basing their speed entirely on how quickly they can manage key inputs as well as their skill with cancels like Berserker or Warrior. Musa is pretty much just based on how much attack speed you have. There are plenty of classes who are similar but are also designed differently. Musa should practically fit into the same category as one of the close range engage classes like Ninja or Kuno. A melee class who can dump damage while staying fairly slippery and mobile through the usage of high speed inputs and an array of cancels for those who are skilled enough to utilize them.

There’s still other issues that can be problematic. For instance, Musa has small movements on pretty much his entire awakening kit that pushes him forward. If you have a specific positioning for the purpose of dealing with your small hitboxes then this can easily screw that up. Which also brings me to that point, which is that Musa has some REALLY small hitboxes considering other melee classes. Trying to group and then DPS can be very difficult sometimes due to the very small radius of his AOE abilities. It can be a pretty common thing for mobs to be just slightly out of position which causes them to not get hit by either important debuffs or main damage skills. The problem scales with the size of the mobs themselves as the larger the mobs the greater the distance between you and the other separate ends of the pack. In some grind zones you might now even be able to hit all ends of the pack regardless of how well you position everything.

Of course, none of these smaller issues are particularly unique to Musa. But since I’m talking about his problems then I might as well mention them.

PVP:  As it currently stands, Musa’s Awakening is just bad in PvP. Yes there are some who succeed with it but it just doesn’t work well.

CC’s And Playstyle: The  first issue is that Musa is pretty much relegated to 6 CC abilities to use and all of which are risky in terms of protections, very short usage windows, and have massive cooldowns. These are Dragon Bite, Stub Arrow, Quick shot, Crosscut into Counter Assassination, and Musa Resolve. Dragon Bite isn’t terrible but it can hardly be considered a good skill due to how short and narrow the hitbox is. There’s also the problem of the frontal guard leaving you easily open to any AOE CC’s casted on top or behind you while engaging.  Stub arrow and Quick shot are both pin point arrow skills on 14 and 15 second cooldowns while both being unprotected with a relatively long animation. Both of these pretty much require you to accurately predict/react to a gap in protections and land the arrow, hoping the CC isn’t resisted, and then you can engage for a combo. If you miss then you have an eternity to wait for another attempt. The Crosscut into Counter Assassination combo is a lot like Dragon Bite. Not terrible but not good and is very inviting for a grab. Finally there’s Musa Resolve which is a short range AOE with no protections and an animation that stops you dead in your tracks and makes you stand still for a split second. Considering how close you have to use this it’s a death sentence vs a lot of classes and will easily get you CC’d and killed. Not to mention that none of these abilities actually deal damage or even apply a debuff so there’s absolutely nothing if you fail to land the CC.

What ends up happening is that compared to normal classes there’s a whole lot less room for success and a massive amount of room for error, and all of this has no additional pay off as a result. This is especially the case as the opponents start to become more protected or more mobile, like a Nova who has high protections, or a Ninja/Sorceress who has high mobility. This forces Musa into a much more boring and linear playstyle of attempting to just trade damage with protections which he isn’t even optimized for in the first place.

A good public example of this behavior was today’s Arena of Arsha tournament with trial characters. 2 Awakening Musa players faced off against each other and there were almost no CC abilities landed during the entire match. The few that did hit were almost blind luck. So it was just a massive amount of throwing out damage at each other until someone made a mistake. The final match in the best of 5 ended after the timer went out and the winner was decided based on who had more HP. It was honestly boring to watch and many viewers even complained about it. However of course it’s not the players fault as the class simply has no other viable playstyles. 

Post continued in next part. 

So, I am just giving my 2 cents. I have played Musa for about a year and a half now in succession.

I only play musa... 630GS { 277 / 280 / 354 } [ IV BS | IV BS | V Kutum ]

Acronyns

FBT =  Forward blind thrust { W + Space }

BS = Blind Slash { S + E }

BSS = Back Step Slash { S + Space}

RS = Rising Storm{ Shift + Q }
SA = Super Armor

CC = Crush Crusher { S + C }

awk = Awaken

Trash Numbers;

5 - 7k Orcs no wep Blue Loot Scroll { depending on rotation }

4.4k Sycrica Blue ls { regardless of rotation }

4.3 - 5.1k SE Blue ls { depending on rotation}

5.4 - 6k Thorn Wood blue ls  { depending of rotation }

4.2 - 5k hystria blue ls { depending of rotation }

7 - 9k aakman {depending of rotation}

Pve combo

Harder Areas;

RS spam + quickshot to gather. Q block , Dbite ,RS , Backstep slash, blind slash,cyclone slash , Carver 2hit debuff,blooming, gale,back chase , FBT , gale, dbite, gale, rabam... repeat

Easier areas;

RS SPAM, run out of stamina, walk, RS SPAM

First things first the bad....

1. Lack of protection on cc initiators.

2. Lack of any method to deal with blocking classes.

3. CD's on arrow initiating abilities.

4. Lack of AOE damage on high damage abilities IE Gale, Cyclone Slash.

5. Due to class mechanic usage on stamina to use abilities going from 1 pack to the other you lack chase.

6. Tiger Blade very useless skills and becomes a run away mechanic.

7. Kicks feel under powered

The good..

1. Fast pace game play.

2. Mobility

3. Rat class

Things I wish were modified

1. Quickslot availability for FBT.

Reason for this is basically anyone new to musa can't use FBT or even veterans seem to make mistakes due to the cancel nature of FBT.

2. Quickslot triggering on Cyclone Slash when in CD.

In succession you should have the option to case cyclone slash when in CD if its hot barred you cannot, however you can still cast it after BS, RS, Carver.

3. Gale needs to hit a wider range of targets.

4. Abilities on CD should have a slightly different animation than abilities off CD to ethansize effects to newer players.

5. FBT should have frontal guard/SA to be more useful in certain situation.

6. Lack of down smashes in succession for combo extensions.

7. Crush Crusher has a large gap, and only has SA if the first hit hits. This compare to newer classes is kind of a joke.

8. Serene Mind should add a blue aura around the musa for better visual queue.

9. The stamina cost from consuming Serene Mind should be lowered to 25 from 100, so you can still chase out after over usage of combos{IE: triple blooming }

10. Arrow Grapple range should be extended to a minimum sage range of aoe to make this skill viable. Currently this skill is half the range of a stub arrow which is not very useful, it is also not protected what so ever, and it should have SA in the current game meta.

Since awk Sage,awk Lahn, awk Hash,nova, get a grab. There really inst any reason why Arrow Grapple should not become a ranged grab as well.

11. Stub Arrow / arrow attack range should be extended to long range rather than mid range which is shorter than Sage aoe.

12. Carver / Divider for them to become part of pvp/pve rotation should have a attack speed buff or accuracy buff.

The rabam's should be modified as well.

IE

Musa's resolve is too useful not to take, any rabam that would be comparing it to should be similar. Instead of critical hit buff , attack speed buff.

Quickshot is also too useful not to take when compared to a melee range skill that is unprotected, another arrow rabam should be added.

Third rabam is both useless.. and is basically filler damage for pve to avoid consuming stamina.

Misc....

As far as succession musa trash pulls I feel the reason it is worst than other classes is 2 fold.

One the range of high damage abilities Gale, RS, RS Blaze, are smaller than other classes area of effect.

Two due to the way blue buff works the consumption of 100 stamina when using skills that are on cd's makes it harder to reach the next pack.

To address the pve portion of the trash count to be comparable to other classes. The blue buff stamina consumption needs to be addressed, and the area of effect size needs to be addressed.

As far as PvP goes, an increase of accuracy on skills should be increased.

Due to chase being an attack and a movement. Attack and movement debuff affect musa's much more than other classes.

The speed you can or can't chase should be be determined by attack speed. The range and distance you chase should not be determined by movement speed.

Additional passive evasion should be added to be comparable to ninja's ,lahns, coursair.

Movement speed buff should be added to chase when compared to Ranger's ability to close the gap it is greater than musa's at the moment. W+W lmb cancel for chase should not be required to play the class in my opinion. 

As it is now musa's ability to pvp relies on desyncing and catching your opponent before you have a chance to load in their screen.

This becomes a FPS/Ping battle to check if your opponent has a good connection to the game better than yours, to land a Dragon Bite, FBT,Blind Slash behind them, or on the side to pass their frontal guard.

Lastly musa cannot SA trade at all with classes with similar gear.