Wiping Utsusemi

[Rubicant82]

There needs to be some BALANCE in shadows.
If the WKR/Delve Bee can have shadows that are not wiped by AOE so should at least Ninja!

Utsi: San - Grants 6 (8 with Empy booties) None "whipible" shadows. Recast 5 min.

[Kensagaku]

Whipable, eh? I certainly wouldn't want my shadows whipped.

That aside, the bee doesn't have unwipeable shadows; its aura is literally a blink aura. When you cast a -ga spells the shadows do indeed get wiped; they simply come back due to the aura that's still in effect. Remove it with ice magic (ice-based AoEs work best) and boom, shadows will stop coming back. Besides, these are also blink shadows (albeit with an annoyingly high proc rate...) and can be bypassed with physical attacks and such, versus Utsusemi that absorbs said hits.

On topic with the OP's thoughts, I agree that NIN shadows could use a bit of a boost. I do believe not every AoE should wipe them, such as large physical attacks; I'm fine with magic, as it's pretty much the shotgun approach to hitting an area, and even with multiple illusions of yourself you're bound to get hit by that big AoE blast. Physical ones though should tie together a NIN's lore-based evasion (because that does so much on things that matter now...) and their shadows to mitigate how many get wiped, almost like your shadows (as well as you) "dodged" the attack. Compare, say, a Tojil tail swipe to a Firaga IV spell. One would be able to be avoided; dodge the tail swing, keep going. The other is an enormous explosion of fire that unless you have instant reflexes, you're looking crispy.

Forgive me if said tail swipe or even all physical attacks do indeed only take X shadows, I haven't played NIN in a while nor seen it used in just about as long. I was under the impression that there was a good deal of TP moves that still wipe shadows regardless of the fact that the attack should be absorbed. The section above was more about trying to illustrate my concept of how I think a ninja's shadows should endure against physical-type attacks, with magic being their weakness.

[FrankReynolds]

They could make San give a separate set of shadows that only block magic / aoe /ws damage and allow regular attacks to pass through. It would only have to be like 2 or 3 shadows.

[Zerowin]

I think I'd be fine with that as long as it stopped your normal shadows from being wiped, but single target magic would still hit Ni shadows.

[Dragomair]

Maybe Job points that lower Utsusemi cast/recast time? (With a separate cap from haste/fast cast)

[FrankReynolds]

Maybe Job points that lower Utsusemi cast/recast time? (With a separate cap from haste/fast cast)

They just added 10% cast time to job points.

[Einalem]

At least you don't have the real Blink.

Now for a statement with no bearing on game mechanics:
The reason AoEs are justifiable as a way of bypassing blink mechanics goes back to D&D.
the sources of 'shadows' made the probability of missing a target increase because you may not be targeting the right one.
AoEs don't care about hitting a specific target, they hit all in equal opportunity.

Back to Game statements:
While I like the flavor of AoEs not caring about the above, I wouldn't mind seeing AoEs bypass shadows without consuming them.

[Zerowin]

To me this doesn't make any since, Ninja's shadows are the PLD's shield and yet AOE's effect ninja the most out of the two. Even with physical aoe's taking two shadows it still take to many shadows, and there is multi hit moves that do a number on them as well. Lets not over look that some mobs attacks ignore shadows all together which is fine when its a very few number of them. We have this giant hole in our defense that every mob seems to know about as they spam everything they have. While I have no idea outside of some that where thought up already, maybe the shadows recast timer can be deceased.

[dasva]

It's been a long time but iirc the change wasn't completely negative. Might be hard to find update notes on it but wasn't it basically just like blink at the time?

[dasva]

To me this doesn't make any since, Ninja's shadows are the PLD's shield and yet AOE's effect ninja the most out of the two. Even with physical aoe's taking two shadows it still take to many shadows, and there is multi hit moves that do a number on them as well. Lets not over look that some mobs attacks ignore shadows all together which is fine when its a very few number of them. We have this giant hole in our defense that every mob seems to know about as they spam everything they have. While I have no idea outside of some that where thought up already, maybe the shadows recast timer can be deceased.

Isn't it only magical ws that actually ignore ws?