NIN in 5.1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1Ao9eWlA_k the ninjutsu has charges i noticed the flow looks nice too

BITS IM HAPPY ABOUT:
-TCJ being hasted by effectively 1.5 seconds

-Charged ninjutsu means no more losing casts to late tcj or kassatsu, our cast windows are way more flexible and we effectively will gain a whole nother ninjutsu cats every minute and a half because of this.

-because of the jutsu move to gcd, AND the shadowfang move to GCD, alignments are much simpler to maintain with trick, even bunshin at 90 seconds will align better.

-looks like suiton got a potency buff. This + ninki costs cut down to 50, and gauge kept at 100 AND gains switched to 5 per wpnsk +5 if bunshin WITH the change to meisui too its now very likely simpler mentally to get a potency gain from and might even just be used on cooldown.

-SkS is okay ish now and cant cause misalignment!

-our 400s long rotation is now much simpler and there is less big brain math think involved in any ninki manipulator skill.

-bunshin can now be meshed with tcj windows without a potency loss.

THINGS UNSURE ABOUT:
-I dont know that ill like the gcd mudra system. Its acceptable speed wise, but learning weaves properly is gonna get weird. Ill be 100% happy with it if SkS effects its .5 and 1.5 cooldowns. If it doesn't ill be a a little sad.

-additionally this likely means much less cpm and i liked the speed of the ninja a lot. Burst phase and opener were super fun.

-difficulty is in my opinion definitely decreasing which i dont like.

-dbl weaving might be dead. I like dbl weaving.

-despite ninki free up there will now be incentive to try to pool resource so as to get 3 bhavacakras in a trick. Bunshin before. Tcj meisui, mug, and basic attack gain could allow this. Our burst window might be painful to optimize. Gonna be fun tho.

THINGS I DISLIKE AND AM SCARED ABOUT:

-balance could be trash. This is effectively far more changes than we got when shadowbringers dropped. We might be crazy OP. We also might be crazy weak.

-less blade play. Less standard gcd. Sf being removed from the combo.

-That said removing SF from the basic combo had some positives, but it also has some serious drawbacks in the tune of how interesting our gcd combos are now, and how lame it will be to have a dot thats effectively just a cooldown that shouldn't be used before downtime phase changes....

-more time spent ninjutsuing, less time stabby slash slash. I dont play NIN to be naruto. Some do tho I guess.

-bunshin is less tied to SkS because of charges. Ninki gain is still tied to it tho.

-if mudra casts as weaponskill monks may want us to pad their dps by intentionally bunny spamming mudra. (*EDIT: I mean to pad monk logs not to actually clear fights, of course this would be a potency loss, but its similar to RDMs spamming un-enhanced melee attacks during brotherhood so the monk does more dps.) Either way mnk synergy would increase.
-if mudra and ninjutsu is not a weaponskill at all our synergy with monks may drastically decrease as our GCDs come out slower.
-but mnk is changing too so who knows.


THINGS IM SAD ABOUT:
-general decrease in difficulty, but more mathematical holding of abilites for the trick burst. I kinda prefered the meisui-brain oGCD filled quick dbl weave style of the current iteration. It may be more oGCD heavy now than ever before in BURST windows... but Im very worried that outside of burst we are gonna be mostly sitting on 1-2-3 combos with a slower less weavy jutsu now and again.

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Originally Posted by Vendalwind

-if mudra casts as weaponskill monks may want us to pad their dps by intentionally bunny spamming mudra. Either way mnk synergy would increase.

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Depends on the potencies, but even if spamming the mudra skill is considered a weapon skill, to have the ninja effectively do 0 damage, since the mudra is on GCD so that the monk can maybe get an extra 360 potency skill would be an overall DPS loss.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

they said there is a pot increase for all the mudra skills so probs ends up being the same if not more in the end

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They're increasing the potencies because it's now part of the global cooldown, though. So I'm thinking this change in isolation since the ice stars > lightning bolt.

I like these changes, except Shadow Fang not being a combo action anymore.
At least on paper.

I may be actually able to dump SMN and play NIN lol my biggest issue was my ping and the mudras did not agree well. Plus SMN will most likely be more of the same bad.

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Originally Posted by Vendalwind

THINGS UNSURE ABOUT:
-I dont know that ill like the gcd mudra system. Its acceptable speed wise, but learning weaves properly is gonna get weird. Ill be 100% happy with it if SkS effects its .5 and 1.5 cooldowns. If it doesnt ill be a a little sad.

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It won't. There's not a single reduced GCD in the game that is affected by GCDs or attack speed of any kind: Skills during MCH's Hypercharge and Monk's Meditation both ignore any and all GCD decreases.

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Originally Posted by 0Lime

I don't really know how to digest these ninja changes. All I wanted was a fix for mudra lag. The no positional requirement on TA is cool too I guess, but we already have true north to solve the problem of not being able to TA on the rear for whatever reason. I wasn't watching too clearly, but I think Shadow Fang is no longer part of a combo? If so that's okay, but it seems like all these "QoL" changes will make the job very easy to play, not that it already wasn't.

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Shadow Fang is a non-combo DoT, Armor Crush was conspicuously absent from every bar.

I'm really happy for the changes but reserved, I want to see how it rolls in the actual game.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Shadow Fang is a non-combo DoT, Armor Crush was conspicuously absent from every bar.

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Armor crush was present, just off to the side easy to miss

Anyone notice they nerf bunshin

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Originally Posted by Saber44

Anyone notice they nerf bunshin

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Again not precisely it had its effective per hit ninki bonus buffed, and its cooldown reduced by 20 or 25 seconds. And its hit count got reduced from maximally 7 down to 5. So its kinda a sidegrade. Its per use potency is less, but its ninki bonus is more distinct at half a bhava and it occurs more regularily.

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Originally Posted by Saber44

Anyone notice they nerf bunshin

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Yes, but not as much as it'd first appear. It'll now do 1000 potency total over melee use (or 1250 when including Ninki generation), down from 1600 (1800), but will generate 40 Ninki, up from 32, and will be available more often. So, yes, you lose 550 potency per press, but you can also press it more often. Since now only 150% more powerful than Bhav (down from 210%), it's a nerf, but that added frequency should keep that nerf slight.

I’m not scared and overall it will be better.

Personally did they remove the bunny mess up? I don’t think that should be removed. trick attack should still be positional I think.

But In terms of mudras, yea it’s about time that changed. Clipping has been an annoying issue forever. And thank the twelve they changed ten chi Jin, now just make it so you can move while doing it and we’re good.

50 gauge cost is good. 15 second trick attack makes more sense these days so that’s good. Bunshin based on 5 gcd’s Well eh I guess it’s fine, I wish it was more like 10 or something but whatever, you can do mudras now tho with bunshin so that’s good.

Odd thought:

Since our AoE GCDs only do 120-130 ppgcd (single or combo) and Shadow Fang (780 potency at present) is now unbound, unless they massively nerf its damage it won't be worth AoEing over simply rotating DoTs until 6+ targets... Even assuming they reduce the direct potency to 100 (resulting in 660 potency per use), it'll still slightly outperform DB-HM spam over 5 targets assuming all ticks complete.

...On the whole it just feels really weird to get Mutilate back all of a sudden, and at double-potency at that...

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Odd thought:

Since our AoE GCDs only do 120-130 ppgcd (single or combo) and Shadow Fang (780 potency at present) is now unbound, unless they massively nerf its damage it won't be worth AoEing over simply rotating DoTs until 6+ targets... Even assuming they reduce the direct potency to 100 (resulting in 660 potency per use), it'll still slightly outperform DB-HM spam over 5 targets assuming all ticks complete.

...On the whole it just feels really weird to get Mutilate back all of a sudden, and at double-potency at that...

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Didn't they say Shadowfang is gonna be a weapon skill with a 60 sec cd, pretty much like Sonic Break on GNB? Would love that to be untrue, because I like Shadowfang the way it is - we don't need to refresh Huton all that often, so using Aeolian combo over and over might get a bit stale, idk how where did they even get the idea that NIN's combos were too busy or complex honestly.

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Originally Posted by Satarn

Didn't they say Shadowfang is gonna be a weapon skill with a 60 sec cd, pretty much like Sonic Break on GNB? Would love that to be untrue, because I like Shadowfang the way it is - we don't need to refresh Huton all that often, so using Aeolian combo over and over might get a bit stale, idk how where did they even get the idea that NIN's combos were too busy or complex honestly.

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Most likely it's to compensate for having ninjutsu take up GCD space. A two step ninjutsu is now already more time consuming than a single GCD so effectively every ninjutsu moved onto the GCD costs 2 of what would ahve originally been GCDs.

Thus removing a two step gcd combo done once every 24 ish seconds (comparable to ninjutsu 20 seconds easily with kassatsu included) is a somewhat fair trade. Point being, keeping track of dots that are combo linked while also having ninjutsu on the GCD would result in a LOT less AE if not for the change.

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Originally Posted by Vendalwind

Most likely it's to compensate for having ninjutsu take up GCD space. A two step ninjutsu is now already more time consuming than a single GCD so effectively every ninjutsu moved onto the GCD costs 2 of what would ahve originally been GCDs.

Thus removing a two step gcd combo done once every 24 ish seconds (comparable to ninjutsu 20 seconds easily with kassatsu included) is a somewhat fair trade. Point being, keeping track of dots that are combo linked while also having ninjutsu on the GCD would result in a LOT less AE if not for the change.

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True, while the mudras themselves seem to be just as fast, those wait times between combos and ninjutsu sequences are gonna add up quite a bit.

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Originally Posted by Satarn

Didn't they say Shadowfang is gonna be a weapon skill with a 60 sec cd, pretty much like Sonic Break on GNB? Would love that to be untrue, because I like Shadowfang the way it is - we don't need to refresh Huton all that often, so using Aeolian combo over and over might get a bit stale, idk how where did they even get the idea that NIN's combos were too busy or complex honestly.

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Ahh, I hadn't seen that. And damn that sucks. Nin rotations have always been pathetically simple. 1 combo SF, 3 direct combos; repeat. Now we have nothing to rotate around? That just feels... awful, honestly.

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Originally Posted by Vendalwind

Most likely it's to compensate for having ninjutsu take up GCD space. A two step ninjutsu is now already more time consuming than a single GCD so effectively every ninjutsu moved onto the GCD costs 2 of what would ahve originally been GCDs.

Thus removing a two step gcd combo done once every 24 ish seconds (comparable to ninjutsu 20 seconds easily with kassatsu included) is a somewhat fair trade. Point being, keeping track of dots that are combo linked while also having ninjutsu on the GCD would result in a LOT less AE if not for the change.

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So what? Do we have a quota on our dullest skill? Gotta hit it 8 times per minute or we break?

Where did it say the cooldown got reduced? And I could easily get 8 hits in I think 6 would be better but that's just me

Sorry but I have no idea what you're saying

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Originally Posted by Saber44

Sorry but I have no idea what you're saying

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The feeling is mutual.

The above discussion is about Shadowfang. It had no cooldown. Therefore it cannot have possibly been reduced. The prior discussion was about Bunshin, the cooldown of which has apparently been reduced though I do not have an image or transcript of that section of the LL to quickly share with you.

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Originally Posted by Saber44

Where did it say the cooldown got reduced? And I could easily get 8 hits in I think 6 would be better but that's just me

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"8 hits" of what? At present, we get about 3 other combos (or 2 combos and a TCJ) per use of Shadowfang, and we apply Shadowfang roughly 2.5 times per minute. 2 of those combos per minute must be used on Armor Crush. Altogether, that leaves us with roughly 7 AE per 3 SF (roughly per 66 to 72 seconds, depending on SkS) or ~6.1-6.4 AE per minute, further reduced by Suiton, Kassatsu, severe clipping in general, or --god forbid-- wasting time on Meisui (for a net ~125 potency loss compared to Raiton).

Similarly, we would get 8 Bunshin hits per use, while that has been reduced to 6.

So... which is it you're talking about? Even just a sliver of specificity would help.

If my statement confused you, I was talking about shadowfang. My apologizze it was poorly worded, I've been traveling and thus only responding on my phone.

I hadn't calculated out the number of Aoelian Edges we got in a minute before, but Im pretty sure its less than that. doing some napkin maths now for it, but I was basically talking about how many GCDs went towards what effectively nerfing of a certain skill (AE)

So if we used to get 8 AE per minute, 2 ACs and ~2.5 Shadow fangs that is a total of (8*3 + 2*3 + 2*2.5) GCDs per minute. 24+6+5 = 35 which shouldn't be possible since we are at 2.1 gcd and clipping some of them with TCJ and three step mudras... So I would guess we were getting 6 per minute (29 GCDs if done with the same math as above.) since clipping, and TCJ will occasionally eat into it some

With Mudra on the GCD AND with it having charges so we dont lose casts we lost .5+.5+1.5 at least every cast and it happens 3X per minute. So thats ~3.57 GCD or one Aeolian lost. If we also include kassatsu (once per minute) thats another 1~.2 GCD lost for a total of ~4.76 at our current speed lost or 1.5 AE

Thus we'd be getting only 4-5 AEs per minute.

Removing shadowfang from the combo gives us back 5 GCDs (at 2.5 shadowfangs per minute, and two GCDs per shadowfang)
Which returns our Aeolian Edge to the break even ~6 GCDS

So my point is: Taking shadowfang out of the combo actually just about perfectly balances the AE losses that mudra's on the GCD will cause.

HUH i hadn't done the math before. Thats actually pretty cool.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Yes, but not as much as it'd first appear. It'll now do 1000 potency total over melee use (or 1250 when including Ninki generation), down from 1600 (1800), but will generate 40 Ninki, up from 32, and will be available more often. So, yes, you lose 550 potency per press, but you can also press it more often. Since now only 150% more powerful than Bhav (down from 210%), it's a nerf, but that added frequency should keep that nerf slight.

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This is what I was replying to

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The feeling is mutual.

The above discussion is about Shadowfang. It had no cooldown. Therefore it cannot have possibly been reduced. The prior discussion was about Bunshin, the cooldown of which has apparently been reduced though I do not have an image or transcript of that section of the LL to quickly share with you.


"8 hits" of what? At present, we get about 3 other combos (or 2 combos and a TCJ) per use of Shadowfang, and we apply Shadowfang roughly 2.5 times per minute. 2 of those combos per minute must be used on Armor Crush. Altogether, that leaves us with roughly 7 AE per 3 SF (roughly per 66 to 72 seconds, depending on SkS) or ~6.1-6.4 AE per minute, further reduced by Suiton, Kassatsu, severe clipping in general, or --god forbid-- wasting time on Meisui (for a net ~125 potency loss compared to Raiton).

Similarly, we would get 8 Bunshin hits per use, while that has been reduced to 6.

So... which is it you're talking about? Even just a sliver of specificity would help.

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The things I said had nothing to do with shadow fang but bunshin

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Originally Posted by Saber44

Where did it say the cooldown got reduced? And I could easily get 8 hits in I think 6 would be better but that's just me

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Why are you stacking so much skill speed as to get 8 GCDs done within 15 seconds? Your GCD would have to be 1.86 seconds to do that.

The change to Bunshin may mean one less GCD being executed under its duration, but now you also won't have to delay executing ninjutsu because you're using Bunshin.

I'm going to try and keep an open mind. The changes are a bit extreme IMO, and I will be heavily dissatisfied if the APM drops too much, but who knows, maybe it will surprise me.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Why are you stacking so much skill speed as to get 8 GCDs done within 15 seconds? Your GCD would have to be 1.86 seconds to do that.

The change to Bunshin may mean one less GCD being executed under its duration, but now you also won't have to delay executing ninjutsu because you're using Bunshin.

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Keep in mind that you technically only need 7.01 GCDs (and 600 ms plus twice your ping minus the delay between activating the Bunshin skill and generating the Bunshin effect) in the window to benefit across 8 GCDs. If Bunshin is used in the final oGCD gap before a weaponskill, and applies its duration and the end of its animation, you'd need only a 2.11 GCD or less to get 8 hits in at 50 ms ping. That requires, what, 26 SkS? 128 at worst?

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Originally Posted by Tenryou

maybe they instead made katon and that useless ice spell the upgraded versions permanently. which is huge dps increase imo and would give kassatsu it's crit ninjutsu jutsu back?

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Please this, It's so satisfying to see my Ninjustu's to crit, I always wondered why it wasn't just a straight upgrade and needed to use Kassatsu for it. I am going to miss the old Kassatsu since I loved spamming my justus.

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Originally Posted by Neela

Might get his meta spot back if TA extended duration fits burstwindows better or is able to extend the burst phase at all... if sam won't pull 20k now x'D

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It could also mean that other players have more time to notice that TA is up and start their heavy hitting before it's gone.

Those changes are pretty much all I wanted and even more. I have to admit I had pretty high hopes and naturally expected to be disappointed.
Now my only worry is that it all aligns so well and nice that it's going to be even more painfull when I mass my rotation because of death, phase change etc lol

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Keep in mind that you technically only need 7.01 GCDs (and 600 ms plus twice your ping minus the delay between activating the Bunshin skill and generating the Bunshin effect) in the window to benefit across 8 GCDs. If Bunshin is used in the final oGCD gap before a weaponskill, and applies its duration and the end of its animation, you'd need only a 2.11 GCD or less to get 8 hits in at 50 ms ping. That requires, what, 26 SkS? 128 at worst?

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oops, you're right. I also neglected to calculate Huton into the GCD cooldown tool I was using, and wrongly assumed you needed nearly 2900 skill speed.

Though I still think I like that this change to Bunshin likely will be a good thing when you consider that ninjutsu will now be on the global cooldown with massively increased potencies means you won't have to hold off performing one becuase you've used Bunshin

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Originally Posted by wereotter

oops, you're right. I also neglected to calculate Huton into the GCD cooldown tool I was using, and wrongly assumed you needed nearly 2900 skill speed.

Though I still think I like that this change to Bunshin likely will be a good thing when you consider that ninjutsu will now be on the global cooldown with massively increased potencies means you won't have to hold off performing one becuase you've used Bunshin

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Usually better to just use Fuma to avoid clipping than to delay a Ninjutsu altogether for Bunshin. And that's still assuming a Raiton/Katon clip would cost you more than whatever minimal SkS you were forced to take with ilvl gives.

The NIN changes sound nice on paper. I've always struggled with latency issues for their opener and that should be a thing of the past now.

I do wonder how it's going to influence their rotation though, as Bunshin being unable to trigger off ninjutsu seems like it would make it impractical to use them at all while it's active. Would their opener perhaps trigger it after Kassatsu > Hyoshin instead of using it immediately before Trick Attack?

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

The NIN changes sound nice on paper. I've always struggled with latency issues for their opener and that should be a thing of the past now.

I do wonder how it's going to influence their rotation though, as Bunshin being unable to trigger off ninjutsu seems like it would make it impractical to use them at all while it's active. Would their opener perhaps trigger it after Kassatsu > Hyoshin instead of using it immediately before Trick Attack?

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It seems you're going to have 30 seconds for those 5 attacks within Bunshin, so it should be fine as long as you don't push them out of TA.

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Originally Posted by Vallerie

It seems you're going to have 30 seconds for those 5 attacks within Bunshin, so it should be fine as long as you don't push them out of TA.

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So it seems like I was right with the changes with Bunshin, so it only copies 5 weaponskills now and once those are exhausted Bunshin will deactivate automatically? I'm going to miss my whole 15 second shadow clone T^T then again CD is lowered to 90 and potency is adjusted as well(?)

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Originally Posted by Kuwago

So it seems like I was right with the changes with Bunshin, so it only copies 5 weaponskills now and once those are exhausted Bunshin will deactivate automatically? I'm going to miss my whole 15 second shadow clone T^T then again CD is lowered to 90 and potency is adjusted as well(?)

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Do we know if potencies are going to be changed or just ninki generation? We already know all weapon skills are going to give less ninki since you only need 50 to use a skill now instead of 80.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Do we know if potencies are going to be changed or just ninki generation? We already know all weapon skills are going to give less ninki since you only need 50 to use a skill now instead of 80.

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The only potency changes I heard of was the Ninjustu potencies are being adjusted since it's going to be part of our GCD, IIRC it's mostly going to be potency increases for that. I was asking specifically about Bunshin potency since they changed it in patch 5.05 I think, and now they're changing it to only copy 5 weaponskills, so what I was wondering was if it's going to have the potency adjusted again.

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Originally Posted by Kuwago

The only potency changes I heard of was the Ninjustu potencies are being adjusted since it's going to be part of our GCD, IIRC it's mostly going to be potency increases for that. I was asking specifically about Bunshin potency since they changed it in patch 5.05 I think, and now they're changing it to only copy 5 weaponskills, so what I was wondering was if it's going to have the potency adjusted again.

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Gotcha :)

Though I do remember reading they said that all skills will generate less ninki this patch. If you're getting the same amount of ninki but everything costs almost half as much, that would be a pretty massive buff. From what I read, skills will now generate 5 ninki instead of 8 ninki leaving the frequency of using ninki skills at all unchanged. Though now I wonder if mug is going to generate the same ammount... In an ideal world this will be buffed to give 50 ninki so it can immediately proc the use of a skill instead of staying on 40 ninki.

I dislike Sonic Break for GNB and so I'm not thrilled with the change to Shadow Fang. Hell, if they're gonna play it off this way, I'd rather they just re-implement it to be like Mutilate was, so that it's on GCD but I can re-apply it at will.

Ninja always fit my OCD playstyle up to this point. Maybe it still will after the update, but I really hope they haven't made things boring. Mudra lag didn't trouble me and so this experience is getting scarier and scarier now as we get closer to patch day.

Dunno if my math is just bad, but NIN seems like it got pretty buffed overall.

Ninjutsu potency was mostly doubled across the board with Suiton getting an even bigger buff to 600 potency, combo finishers got buffed slightly, and Kassatsu is on a tiny 15 second cooldown.

The only actual nerfs as far as I can tell are are Trick Attack's debuff being 5% but lasting five seconds longer, Shadow Fang being on a 70 second cooldown and Bhavacakra having lower potency/taking longer to accumulate ninki for.

My most likely horribly incorrect preliminary opener would be Suiton > Spinning Edge (Mug+Meisui) > Gale Slash (TCJ) > Aeolian Edge (Bunshin + TA) > Shadow Fang (Kassatsu + DwD) > Hyoshin (Assassinate) > Raiton (Bhavacakra)