[dev1017] Yonin/Innin

[wish12oz]

While separating the timers for these abilities is indeed a step in the right direction, it doesn't fix the inherent problem with these abilities.

Innin is completely useless to anyone that knows how to play ninja. It takes all of 30-40 seconds to cap your enmity, and after that as long as you had the last action on the mob, the mob will be facing you, and ninjas attack really fast, meaning the mob will just about always be facing you meaning the only effect you get from innin is -evasion, and maybe 1 attack out of 20 you'll gain the crit rate increase from it. To fix innin you need to remove the "You must stand behind the mob" requirement from it.

Yonin also has it's problems. Yonin is designed to increase a ninjas enmity and help them tank by giving them an evasion boost, but it fails miserably at increasing your ability to keep hate. It seems like the Dev team doesn't understand how ninjas tank and when the job is useful, so I will explain it. Ninja is only useful for tanking weaker mobs. This means mobs that you can do effective damage on, and not be completely crushed by jobs like war, sam, drk, etc. So their level cannot be much higher then yours, they also cannot have lots of defense or evasion either. Before abyssea, this consisted of dynamis, limbus, einherjar and weak NMs, like serket, or roc or farming pops for sky gods and fighting things like ullikummi or mother globe.

Now why is yonin useless? It's because it was very very hard to cap your acc without using sushi due to katanas being 1 handed weapons, and since they are 1 handed weapons you also suffer from a low attack value, so what you really want to use is good attack food, not pizza or sushi. So knowing that you're only good for DD tanking, and understanding that you can barely cap acc if you even can cap acc, why does this JA that is suppose to help you tank start off with -30 acc? thats -15% hit rate, or -15% damage, whichever way you want to look at it. And as I said when talking about innin, if you have as much enmity as someone else, whoever had the last action is going to be tanking, so you really need that 15% hit rate to stay on top of the mobs attention. The minus accuracy effect of yonin needs to be removed for it to be useful, and in all honesty, it would be really nice if it actually increased accuracy by 30, it's suppose to be helping you tank after all, and being able to cap acc without food on harder mobs would be very helpful in that respect.

This brings me to another point, why is ninja so popular right now? The answer is simple, it's not popular right now, it's always been popular, the problem was that it use to not be very useful, but right now, since EVERYTHING is weak and can be DD tanked, ninja is back on top of the world and people can play it to their hearts content. Personally, I would like to see ninja stay this way since I am biased and it is my favorite job, so I really hope that in the future with further updates SE will seriously look at the inherent problems with ninja and fix them so that it can be useful all the time, and not just on weak mobs.

[Bulrogg]

I'm glad to here the two JA will not have seperate timers but I'm still curious as to why the Devs placed a position requirement on yonin/innin in the first place. Knowing that it is easy to cap hate without the use of Yonin, did they envision two ninjas standing opposite sides of a mob and using Innin to lock it down into position while dual tanking? Yes I know that with the mob turning back and forth one of the NIN will not be gaining the boost from Innin 100% of the time. Yes I know the mob could die faster with a different setup, etc... I'm not here to argue any of that. I'm just curious why the devs felt the need to add a position restriction in the first place before I hop onto a "remove position restriction" bandwagon.

[Juilan]

I'm glad to here the two JA will not have seperate timers but I'm still curious as to why the Devs placed a position requirement on yonin/innin in the first place. Knowing that it is easy to cap hate without the use of Yonin, did they envision two ninjas standing opposite sides of a mob and using Innin to lock it down into position while dual tanking? Yes I know that with the mob turning back and forth one of the NIN will not be gaining the boost from Innin 100% of the time. Yes I know the mob could die faster with a different setup, etc... I'm not here to argue any of that. I'm just curious why the devs felt the need to add a position restriction in the first place before I hop onto a "remove position restriction" bandwagon.

two nin standing on opposite sides of the monster... sounds like how i leveled it til 37... and warrior and every other melee job from 24 - 37 less thf... maybe the devs dont have the first genkai over with

[Brigandier]

While separating the timers for these abilities is indeed a step in the right direction, it doesn't fix the inherent problem with these abilities.

Innin is completely useless to anyone that knows how to play ninja. It takes all of 30-40 seconds to cap your enmity, and after that as long as you had the last action on the mob, the mob will be facing you, and ninjas attack really fast, meaning the mob will just about always be facing you meaning the only effect you get from innin is -evasion, and maybe 1 attack out of 20 you'll gain the crit rate increase from it. To fix innin you need to remove the "You must stand behind the mob" requirement from it.

Yonin also has it's problems. Yonin is designed to increase a ninjas enmity and help them tank by giving them an evasion boost, but it fails miserably at increasing your ability to keep hate. It seems like the Dev team doesn't understand how ninjas tank and when the job is useful, so I will explain it. Ninja is only useful for tanking weaker mobs. This means mobs that you can do effective damage on, and not be completely crushed by jobs like war, sam, drk, etc. So their level cannot be much higher then yours, they also cannot have lots of defense or evasion either. Before abyssea, this consisted of dynamis, limbus, einherjar and weak NMs, like serket, or roc or farming pops for sky gods and fighting things like ullikummi or mother globe.

Now why is yonin useless? It's because it was very very hard to cap your acc without using sushi due to katanas being 1 handed weapons, and since they are 1 handed weapons you also suffer from a low attack value, so what you really want to use is good attack food, not pizza or sushi. So knowing that you're only good for DD tanking, and understanding that you can barely cap acc if you even can cap acc, why does this JA that is suppose to help you tank start off with -30 acc? thats -15% hit rate, or -15% damage, whichever way you want to look at it. And as I said when talking about innin, if you have as much enmity as someone else, whoever had the last action is going to be tanking, so you really need that 15% hit rate to stay on top of the mobs attention. The minus accuracy effect of yonin needs to be removed for it to be useful, and in all honesty, it would be really nice if it actually increased accuracy by 30, it's suppose to be helping you tank after all, and being able to cap acc without food on harder mobs would be very helpful in that respect.

This brings me to another point, why is ninja so popular right now? The answer is simple, it's not popular right now, it's always been popular, the problem was that it use to not be very useful, but right now, since EVERYTHING is weak and can be DD tanked, ninja is back on top of the world and people can play it to their hearts content. Personally, I would like to see ninja stay this way since I am biased and it is my favorite job, so I really hope that in the future with further updates SE will seriously look at the inherent problems with ninja and fix them so that it can be useful all the time, and not just on weak mobs.

While I agree that your suggestions might help make Yonin/Innin better from a "making ninja more powerful" perspective, the questions SE has to answer really come down to "How broken are we actually going to make this job?", "what direction do we want to take this job?", and "what jobs are getting screwed if we buff this job?". Ninja is a good all-rounder right now, and comparing my ninja (which is non-emp, medium grade) to other jobs, I am amazed NIN hasn't been swatted down a notch or two. If further changes were to happen to Yonin/Innin, I would be satisfied with a lowered timer and same functionality.

You've pointed out the biggest issue with Ninja (and a few other jobs) at the end of your post. Ninja is getting use because it's able to do numerous things well; however, when the nerf happens or the jobs we replaced get buffed we're going to be right back on the "do not invite" list. What Ninja needs is something it does *best*, something that no other job can do. In fact, all jobs should have a niche that no other job can fill. Considering how the abyssea proc system works (and the new weird dynamis JA procs) it's easy to see that SE is trying to give everyone a reason to bring along that "other job" when they otherwise wouldn't. There just isn't enough job class disparity, and this is why most career NINs are stupid to not have a job that does have that "special something" like Treasure Hunter.

[wish12oz]

While I agree that your suggestions might help make Yonin/Innin better from a "making ninja more powerful" perspective, the questions SE has to answer really come down to "How broken are we actually going to make this job?", "what direction do we want to take this job?"

The buffs proposed would only make ninja closer to being on even footing on easy mobs in terms of damage it can deal when compared to the top tier Melees. On harder mobs even with these adjustments ninja would still be lacking. The only proof of this I can offer is the Ukons in my einherjar LS do about 25% more damage then my ninja, and I have perfect tp/ws gear, while they are close to perfect, but not there, they can actually improve a bit, I cannot. The crit rate increase from using Innin full time would even that out on weak mobs, like those in einherjar, but for harder mobs ninja would still suffer from the lack of attack, the long delay between WS's compared to other jobs, and the low WS damage in comparison to melee damage. WAR for instance is about a 40%melee/60%ws damage split. Ninja is the opposite, 60/40 and only if you have blade: Hi, if you're using jin its more like 70%melee 30%ws.

Not to mention the fact that Jin and Hi are both only good if they can crit, which is exceedingly hard on higher lvl mobs, because capping dDEX can become difficult, and outside of atmas, your crit rate caps at 25% from ddex/merits, and with gear you can really only push it to 39%, allowing the use of innin would help tremendously with WS's as well for harder mobs where you cant cap ddex and lose that 20% crit rate.

You've pointed out the biggest issue with Ninja (and a few other jobs) at the end of your post. Ninja is getting use because it's able to do numerous things well; however, when the nerf happens or the jobs we replaced get buffed we're going to be right back on the "do not invite" list. What Ninja needs is something it does *best*, something that no other job can do. In fact, all jobs should have a niche that no other job can fill. Considering how the abyssea proc system works (and the new weird dynamis JA procs) it's easy to see that SE is trying to give everyone a reason to bring along that "other job" when they otherwise wouldn't. There just isn't enough job class disparity, and this is why most career NINs are stupid to not have a job that does have that "special something" like Treasure Hunter.

There doesn't need to be any sort of nerf or buff to other jobs to make ninja go back to the bottom, all SE has to do is add slightly harder mobs then there is right now.

Ninja already has it's niche btw, it's the DD tank. When you need something that can do damage and keep hate and not take tons of damage, ninja is the go-to job, but only if the mobs are weak, ninja fails completely on anything it can't melee well enough to keep hate off other melees. Good post though.

[Brigandier]

The buffs proposed would only make ninja closer to being on even footing on easy mobs in terms of damage it can deal when compared to the top tier Melees.

It's hard to convey my tone through text, so please read this in a very serious and not trolling/being hateful way lol. Ninja has always been the job where either half the people cry that they can't DD with the top tier DDs, or they can't tank with the PLDs and RDMs (or sometimes they even want both). You even have some hilarious instances where people complain about ninjutsu nukes being useless compared to other nuking jobs. I can agree that our current niche is DD tanking, but there are several other jobs that can /NIN up and do the same such as THF or DNC (on the same medium grade mobs we tank, that is).

I'm not saying I wouldn't welcome improvements to Ninja, I am just saying that I doubt SE wants to bring it up to that level. After all, they've already nailed us with an A- rating on Katana, the weapon only NINs can use. It's almost like they said "let's make a job that does everything, just not as well as jobs that specialize".

NINJA EDIT: I also played WHM back in the day RDMs were making it look stupid, but SE actually stepped up and added more oomph and gave WHM its niche back; unfortunately, now RDM seems to be back burnered much the way NIN used to be. What do?

[wish12oz]

It's hard to convey my tone through text, so please read this in a very serious and not trolling/being hateful way lol. Ninja has always been the job where either half the people cry that they can't DD with the top tier DDs, or they can't tank with the PLDs and RDMs (or sometimes they even want both).

I want both, back before the tp floor nerf, dual wield nerf, and 2 handed update, NIN had both. Us oldschool people want it back, not to be that way for the first time. PLD should be more for mobs you want a tank on when you can't deal with it having lots of TP, and need lots of defensive abilities and to absorb most of the mobs damage. Ninja is the tank that should be used when mob TP isn't of much importance and you need something to absorb a lot of damage. For a short period of time, this is how it actually worked, and if they just increased NINs damage potential a bit we could have it back, provided whoever is playing the ninja is good at it.

EDIT::: WAR is the tank when damage taken just plain doesn't matter =3

I'm not saying I wouldn't welcome improvements to Ninja, I am just saying that I doubt SE wants to bring it up to that level. After all, they've already nailed us with an A- rating on Katana, the weapon only NINs can use. It's almost like they said "let's make a job that does everything, just not as well as jobs that specialize".

Ninja has A- Katana because it was a balance issue, because they got so many A skills, they didn't want to make any of them A+, but they wanted them all to be high, so they got a bunch of A-'s.

NINJA EDIT: I also played WHM back in the day RDMs were making it look stupid, but SE actually stepped up and added more oomph and gave WHM its niche back; unfortunately, now RDM seems to be back burnered much the way NIN used to be. What do?

WHM was never really bad, you just didn't need cure 5, and when you did, people brought WHMs, like they brought them to HNMs. RDM is the same right now, if you need the enhanced enfeebling ability or increased MP it offers, people bring them, like to voidwatch.

[wish12oz]

So I went and fought some of the higher level dynamis mobs today, and my acc was only about 85% on ninja, on VTs, not even IT mobs. Not using acc food, not using yonin, using 475 total accuracy in gear/skill/dex, I could only manage an 85% hit rate. This is really as much as you can get on ninja (mithra no less) before you start making major cuts into your damage potential by swapping in accuracy gear, and it's horrible. If I had as much acc and dex on my WAR gear as I do on my NIN, I would be way over cap. This is seriously becoming a problem again SE. Don't let us ninjas down, cut us a break, don't send us back to being a crap job people don't want to play.

Just for refferance, if I used Yonin, my accuracy would of been 70% when I first used it, going up to 80% before it wore off, so my new average would of been 75%, that's just ridiculous, these aren't even HNMs I'm talking about, these are weak exp level range mobs.

[Cdryik]

With the lack of accuracy, Yonin doesn't help to much keeping hate if you keep missing, where with Innin you get hate so easily despit of the enmity - on it. Yes, there's a lil problem with Yonin/Innin mechanics actually. the critical hit rate -15% on Yonin could be a better alternative to not be a powerfull DD that can tank also very well (atleast outside of abyssea).

[Ravenmore]

Geuss Acc food got taken out the game and DW never had to eat it in merit or endgame. Also 2handers were eating meat long before the 2hander update.