The current “no-washing rule” of Oddjobs looks like (and has looked like, for a long time) this:
- Don’t wash. HP (and MP) washing is disallowed.*
*Leniency is granted for permabeginners (of any variety), permarchers, permarogues, and permapirates who are HP and/or MP washing. Just don’t take advantage of this exception so much that the “don’t accept leech” rule becomes an issue.
The new version of the rule looks like this:
- Don’t HP (and/or MP) wash so much that the “don’t accept leech” rule becomes an issue.
As you can see, this effectively repeals the rule entirely, while maintaining some of the wording that reaffirms the “no-leech rule” (which is, of course, an entirely separate rule of its own).
The no-washing rule has always had some exceptions for certain jobs that have lower natural (read: unwashed) MAXHP pools than unwashed non-odd archers/sins/slingers. Originally, this was just permabeginners (of any kind), but was later extended to all such jobs, which means including permarchers, permarogues, and permapirates as well. The new “version” of the rule eliminates the inconsistencies caused by allowing washing for certain jobs, but not for others. Additionally, it allows low-INT mages (STR mages, DEX mages, and especially gishes & gishlets) to MP wash when that becomes important (usually just for casting ultimates, but sometimes other stuff as well). And, last but not least, this removes some of the mild redundancy caused by having a rule against washing and a rule against leeching. With a rule against leeching, washing can only go so far — you still have to play your character, so no gameplay is really “lost”, if you will.
Of course, washing brings with it its own unpleasantries that make the game less fun. And, it can make the game take artificially long amounts of time, due to the need to vote for NX to buy APRs with. But we’ve already been dealing with this on our odd-jobbed characters who do wash, and the repealing of this rule merely gives guild members the option to do some washing as they see fit (again, assuming that no leeching is involved).
My only real lasting gripe with further loosening (indeed, repealing) this rule is how it interacts with certain odd jobs, viz. HP warriors and blood dits. HP warriors and blood dits are, in large part, defined by their very large MAXHP pools; and they give up their stats (STR, DEX, LUK) to get there. The blood dit, and especially the HP warrior, are classic odd jobs. Yet, from the perspective of an HP warrior, the only difference between them and a sader/hero/whatever who washes to 30k MAXHP is that they are statless. This does increase their PG DPS relative to the ordinary hero, but still leaves the ordinary washed hero dangerously close to blurring some lines. And the blood dit doesn’t even gain anything from their statlessness per se, other than the leftover AP that they can invest into MAXHP instead. Both of these things are artefacts of the original MapleStory, from before washing was invented — and also from after washing was invented, but was too costly (in terms of real-world money) to be accessible to the overwhelmingly vast majority of the playerbase.
That being said, I currently believe that the situation is still fine for these two odd jobs:
- HP warriors still have the statlessness advantage w.r.t. PG DPS, and still gain their MAXHP much more quickly than almost any washing warrior.
- Blood dits gain MAXHP far more quickly than any washing dit, unless possibly the washing dit is already at an advanced level, and is washing extremely aggressively. I don’t even know if Soblet has washed hard enough to meet blood dit levels of lifetime MAXHP gain, and that’s saying something (not to mention that Soblet leeched, albeit in an extremely difficult and unorthodox way)…