Trick Attack

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Originally Posted by aloneatsea

I'm sorry, but this is just not correct. On high enough ping, double-weaving will clip on any class. However, with reasonable ping, double-weaving after a GCD is perfectly fine. The only instances where you can't double-weave would be with your pot (as the pot animation lock prevents you from doing so) or immediately following a mudra/ninjutsu cast, as the cast time of your mudra occupies too much of your first weave slot.

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Do you play a job with a 2.1 gcd? Nin doesnt clip at 66 theres never a need.

We are slowly but surely moving toward jobs having zero support outside of 2 min buffs.

Ever since they got rid of aggro management, NIN lost its utility in managing aggro for big damage dealers ala SAM/BLM.

Then they removed weapon type resistance debuffs, so they lost their other niche. (Although it was for the health of balance).

So then NIN just became a trick slave and almost always got hit with weak personal dps because they're sacrificing their damage for everyone else to thrive. But consensus was that there was a lot of work for little reward. Not to mention NIN is more punishing since you can still mess up mudras.

Eventually all of the rdps dps are going to be fighting for who has the best 2 min burst.

Idk what SE could do at this point to give "support" jobs more meaningful ways of support their team without it being damage related.

Realistically Mug should just be trick attack now and suiton should lead into some sort of larger burst skill every minute instead. As it stands this change makes overall party interaction improve for the debuff, but doesn't actually solve the issue of drifting for the NIN itself. I also really don't see why we need to have so many buffs/debuffs on NIN at this point. We already have Huton to keep up, still have TA, Kassatsu (which I think flows fine but really all its doing for single target is making a useless jutsu actually do something), Bunshin, and now Mug. On top of that, it's kind of annoying imo that NIN's rotation doesn't really have much to make it feel like there's a big difference with the burst window anymore. Personal TA is just gonna be more of the same. As scuffed as the raiju opener was in 6.0 it was at least different and not the same paced Aeolian Edge combo. Meanwhile bunshin still is on a 90s CD so we're only getting that every third TA and Mug to line up. So while I think the transfer of the debuff to Mug is overall good, I don't really get why TA wasn't entirely changed, or the skills just swapped around and Mug becomes a stealth ability that does bigger damage. Really just something that at least doesn't retain drift issues.

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Originally Posted by elioaiko

Ever since they got rid of aggro management, NIN lost its utility in managing aggro for big damage dealers ala SAM/BLM.

Then they removed weapon type resistance debuffs, so they lost their other niche. (Although it was for the health of balance).

So then NIN just became a trick slave and almost always got hit with weak personal dps because they're sacrificing their damage for everyone else to thrive. But consensus was that there was a lot of work for little reward. Not to mention NIN is more punishing since you can still mess up mudras.

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You get it, as it feels like this has been something a long time coming (sadly). NIN has a lot they have to do for good damage output, and as of recently, the devs have stated they want complex jobs to do more damage, something completely opposite to how NIN has been for the longest (as it was complex and the lowest melee DPS). Going forward, it seems they want the majority of the support to come from the physical ranged and the casters (with the exceptions of BLM and MCH).

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Originally Posted by elioaiko

Idk what SE could do at this point to give "support" jobs more meaningful ways of support their team without it being damage related.

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There is lots of things that cause and remove status effects. But it remains to be seen if they would actually incorporate such things outside of blue mage related content.

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Originally Posted by Manofpassion

People just don't get it. They only care about numbers and balance. I am by no means a good ninja player, but I find trick attack fun. I find mashing everything into trick attack fun.

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And nothing will change for you. You will still use everything you have under Trick. Going by the little information we got so far this changes NOTHING for the NIN rotation outside of keeping Mug on cooldown as opposed to allowing it to drift slightly (unless they change our Ninki generation)

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Originally Posted by Manofpassion

People just don't get it. They only care about numbers and balance. I am by no means a good ninja player, but I find trick attack fun. I find mashing everything into trick attack fun. I find allowing my party to take advantage of my trick during odd minutes fun. I enjoy the “challenge” of keeping my tricks on time every minute to help my party do more damage fun. This hurts my enjoyment of the job, and what a lot of players find fun about the job. Im not a slave to damage and balance and logs. I just like the job.

And the fact people still say "they haven't cut it out entirely". They kept the icon and the name of the move, but they have changed the purpose of the move, and what the move does. You think drk's old delirium is still in the game just because the name is still around? it if looks like a duck, or doesn't look like a duck rather, it's not a duck. If you keep the animation for communio and the name but make it a healing spell, that's not the same move

Also if square really does balance the game around fflogs, I will be very amused. The guys at fflogs better get a paycheck from yoshida every month if they do half of their job for them. Square's balancing team being slaves to a formula people came up with on the Internet is just funny.

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Here is the full quote. I said “ People just don't get it. They only care about numbers and balance. I am by no means a good ninja player, but I find trick attack fun. I find mashing everything into trick attack fun. I find allowing my party to take advantage of my trick during odd minutes fun. I enjoy the “challenge” of keeping my tricks on time every minute to help my party do more damage fun.” What will change is my enjoyment of the job. Good job ignoring the next two sentences though.

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Originally Posted by Hawuhawuu

Double weaving clips on nin and should be avoided at all costs. The only acceptable time to double weaving is when potting. When clipping mug/bunshin together.bunshin before your 3rd gcd gives you 100 ninki in your opener which is now gone and or either yours or teams buffs dont get the full value from buffs as its not at an optimal time.

I personally will be doing whatever maximizes my damage over the parties. Thats their goal with this change.

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If you want to maximise your damage over the parties, I suggest you watch this video created by one of the mentors in the balance: https://bit.ly/3sy2kBx

While mug isn't double weaved in the opener, it is done so in even minute bursts after that. I have been told the gain is quite small, and that there is no need to stress about it. I do wonder if their decision to make mug the new raid buff is also to stop people from double weaving mug in trick. While I personally don't do it because I am bad at the game, I wouldn't be surprised their decision was influenced by square's fetish to remove any and all kind of personal optimisation, even for such a microscopic gain. As a pretty casual raider, square removing this small optimisation doesn't do anything for me. I don't really enjoy the game more knowing people are forced to be as bad as I am. If top tier ninjas want that small gain, let them. I'm still not gonna be a purple parser when they remove this.

If Mug is just 5% every 120s imma be pretty damn disappointed.......

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

You get it, as it feels like this has been something a long time coming (sadly). NIN has a lot they have to do for good damage output, and as of recently, the devs have stated they want complex jobs to do more damage, something completely opposite to how NIN has been for the longest (as it was complex and the lowest melee DPS). Going forward, it seems they want the majority of the support to come from the physical ranged and the casters (with the exceptions of BLM and MCH).

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To me NIN is one of the least complex jobs though.

It has a lot of micromanagement, yes, but Trick provides a singular burst window as a point of focus to get a handle on our toolkit, and we have the most uptime tools out of any melee job. Only Paladin rivals our potential in that regard, and it’s localized to their burst window while we retain the ability to use most of our tools however we want past the opener.

A lot of the changes I want for the job aim to cut down on said micromanagement as well as bloat. And I think do it better than what SE is proposing. Mug is one of those buttons we simply do not need in the first place.

Ninja is not a complex class. It's just stuffing everything into trick. Right now, if your tricks aren't on time, the party dps suffers. With the change, since trick is personal, it's the nin who will suffer. This change will satisfy the ninjas who prioritise their own personal dps, and those who want to be more independent. I think most people play nin to be team players however - the ninja players who want big deeps can just move to literally any other melee dps class. Dragoon, Samurai, Reaper and monk all do the prioritise personal dps thing. Do we really need every single melee dps class to do the same thing, or have the devs decided that if you want a buff based playstyle, you need to play a p ranged.

I feel like the fanbase spreading nin propaganda that its the hardest class in the game or whatever is not doing the class any favours. The devs, when they do decide to actually listen to feedback, probably think nin needs to be simplified. Maybe the class was complex when mudras were ogcd, but we're a pretty simple and honestly I might even say slow job right now, there is no need to make ninja even slower and require less thought. When they made Huton 60 secs instead of 70, I was actually quite happy that they are making huton oh so slightly more difficult to manage. I would say that's another example that the devs have no idea what to do with ninja. They're making some bits harder, and some bits easier. End result is no progress in any direction. Square needs to spend less time and money on these unnecessary changes and try to create some original ninja utility so it can be a "support" melee again. With ninja being less of a support, the answer isn't to strip away its support identity entirely, but to give it back. In combat Peloton, perhaps mug could be used to steal mp and give it to someone else, whatever. These are probably bad suggestions, but I'm not being paid Square Enix bucks to do their job.

I never really hear experienced NIN players at least say that NIN is hard, I think it's usually people who have just '' tried it out '' who think that the Mudras are hard or people who haven't played it and just look at them and think that it's hard to memorize and perform.
Mudras did use to be harder to use too and very prone to screwing up due to server lag they've changed VERY drastically over the years.
They used to be super fast and Raiton wasn't even used most of the time in single-target because of how fast they were and how easily latency would screw it up if I remember correctly it was only a small gain in perfect scenarios with an absolutely perfect connection.
And then they had a lot of utility that required some actual knowledge of the fights on a deeper level than other DPS.

Nowadays tho I don't think that NIN is harder than others and I really don't see people claiming that it is either except for some exceptions who probably don't even know how they play currently.

Nin is hard to learn only in specific scenarios. Getting full burst off in the middle of pinax is the only hard part of the tier but once you get it down its easy. Most people find its hard because one wrong button on Ninjitsu ruins your burst.

While the job can be hard at times overall its not that hard.

I posted a more detailed examination of Ninja's utility over the years in the other thread, but the conclusion I came to was that it was not so much that Ninja's utility specifically was being removed -- rather, that the systems Ninja used to support (TP, enmity management, stuns etc) no longer have a place in the current FFXIV. The utility that has remained essentially comes down to Trick Attack -- something that has been in NIN's kit since its very inception in 2.4.

I can understand given how Ninja used to have a much more supportive role that many players wish for that utility to be restored in some which way. However, I personally cannot think of a good way to implement this, as much as I like the concept. Shields and healing are handled by healers, mitigation is spread across all roles in different formats. While you could, in theory, give Ninja some kind of mitigaiton ability, I worry that that would make Ninja far more preferential to bring over other melee DPS in prog. That said, maybe I'm overthinking, given Red Mage exists as it does.

With this in mind, however, it simply screams to me that maintaining Trick Attack as Ninja's unique personal party buff -- in it's current form -- is the most sensible and most Ninja-like way to maintain that utility. Nothing about Mug screams party buff. Trick Attack, however, does. To me, it gives the impression of some kind of dirty trick like throwing sand in the eyes of an opponent, to temporarily weaken them or distract them -- opening up a vulnerability.

It is because of this that I am so firmly against the idea of Trick becoming a personal buff. It is the last of NIN's utility, and a mainstay of its kit. Would Ninja be the same without mudras? I would think not. Trick is just as important.

I would however like to see the devs work on making mudras less clunky. If one was to press ten, then chi, it would be nice if ten chi would not be selectable anymore and greyed out like an ogcd on cooldown. Square's servers are pretty iffy for me, but a minor change like that would be helpful in ensuring my kassatsu isn't wasted on fuma. I'm actually unsure why this change isn't in the game already? Maybe some more experienced ninja players can explain. At any rate, this is a change that would make more sense to be prioritised over whatever is is they are trying to do. Dancers can mess us their dance all the time and not have to wear a bunny. I like mudras a lot, but this is a change that wouldn't erode ninja's identity, and simplify the class, fulfilling square's fetish, so that new players would be willing to give nin a try. They could even sell the bunny mudra as an emote on the cash shop. Seems like an easy win to me.

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Originally Posted by Theihe

You are mistaken.
I do speedkills.
I optimize.
I perform at a very high level.
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I understand why you reacted this way, but this was unnecessary. I don't get why you're bragging on the official forums and bringing up logs to bolster yourself. No speedrunner would come in here and do that anyway. And the idea of 'not taking people's ideas seriously if they perform worse'? A player does not need to be amazing log-wise to know what they're talking about.

However, I mostly disagree with the points you made. For the sake of balance and removing the disparity between NIN players, the proposal is deleting NIN's unique staple and forcing it on the 2m like everyone else is just a sleeper. MNK and DRG are just alternate versions of the same job, rotation and buff type/% aside. Will it make balance easier on SE's behalf? Sure, I suppose. Doesn't mean this change is any good.

NIN's rotation is unlikely to change very much, but a lot of jobs find it very fun to play around Trick Attack or have it on their radar. You can see the difference between a good DRK and a bad DRK solely based how well they can work around Trick, same goes for SAMS, DNCs, RPRs... that have that option to do so, but otherwise it won't naturally happen. You see it as a restriction, others find it fun and rewarding.

Also are you suggesting a NIN's lower personal contributes less into buffs? A job that has one of the highest 2m bursts and is respectable every minute? The job is incredible for buffs. aDPS is a very flawed metric though if you don't strip down the comp first.

Even so, what class you decide to bring to prog does not matter when savage content is clearable on any job outside maybe week 1 if the potency tuning is just terrible. NINs can clear the content fine without the need for players to "plan and optimize". Especially given their excellent disengage ability and simple enough filler that makes mechanical execution simple, something that other melee may just not have during prog. Week 1 & 2 prog groups have brought NIN in the past and had no issues, despite the scaling. Early PF can clear just fine with a NIN. With any job in that matter. If you can't clear the week 2 dps check and you're on NIN, I think you have other issues unrelated to Trick Attack (:

That is just the nature of buff jobs and unless we want carbon copies of the same job for "balance", some jobs do better in certain situations than others. Having a unique staple means a job has both weaknesses and strengths, and if you want jobs to be viable in every situation, we might as well be all playing the same job! Because that's what direction we're heading in and honestly it's rather boring.

And shouldn't this argument apply to tether and litany as well, both buffs are just slightly behind Trick's total utility? DRG also relies on its party members, both to not bring guaranteed crit and for a good partner to utilize tether.

Personally, I do not like the announced changes to Trick Attack and Mug. Trick Attack has been, since the beginning, a keystone of Ninja's job identity. Being so identifiable to Ninja that the term "Trick Attack Bot" is a colloquial term used to reference Ninja. Mug on the other hand is not as identifiable to Ninja but is now on its way to taking what made Trick Attack special, while being less frequent to use. Trick Attack should remain the party buff that it has always been, just increase the cooldown to 120s, and make Mug a 60s cooldown with an added personal buff, and cut the Ninki gain in half. This retains job and skill identity.

Job identity should not be sacrificed for homogeny, especially when the job identity can still be preserved.

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Originally Posted by kackal_Jackal

I understand why you reacted this way, but this was unnecessary. I don't get why you're bragging on the official forums and bringing up logs to bolster yourself. No speedrunner would come in here and do that anyway. And the idea of 'not taking people's ideas seriously if they perform worse'? A player does not need to be amazing log-wise to know what they're talking about.

However, I mostly disagree with the points you made. For the sake of balance and removing the disparity between NIN players, the proposal is deleting NIN's unique staple and forcing it on the 2m like everyone else is just a sleeper. MNK and DRG are just alternate versions of the same job, rotation and buff type/% aside. Will it make balance easier on SE's behalf? Sure, I suppose. Doesn't mean this change is any good.

NIN's rotation is unlikely to change very much, but a lot of jobs find it very fun to play around Trick Attack or have it on their radar. You can see the difference between a good DRK and a bad DRK solely based how well they can work around Trick, same goes for SAMS, DNCs, RPRs... that have that option to do so, but otherwise it won't naturally happen. You see it as a restriction, others find it fun and rewarding.

Also are you suggesting a NIN's lower personal contributes less into buffs? A job that has one of the highest 2m bursts and is respectable every minute? The job is incredible for buffs. aDPS is a very flawed metric though if you don't strip down the comp first.

Even so, what class you decide to bring to prog does not matter when savage content is clearable on any job outside maybe week 1 if the potency tuning is just terrible. NINs can clear the content fine without the need for players to "plan and optimize". Especially given their excellent disengage ability and simple enough filler that makes mechanical execution simple, something that other melee may just not have during prog. Week 1 & 2 prog groups have brought NIN in the past and had no issues, despite the scaling. Early PF can clear just fine with a NIN. With any job in that matter. If you can't clear the week 2 dps check and you're on NIN, I think you have other issues unrelated to Trick Attack (:

That is just the nature of buff jobs and unless we want carbon copies of the same job for "balance", some jobs do better in certain situations than others. Having a unique staple means a job has both weaknesses and strengths, and if you want jobs to be viable in every situation, we might as well be all playing the same job! Because that's what direction we're heading in and honestly it's rather boring.

And shouldn't this argument apply to tether and litany as well, both buffs are just slightly behind Trick's total utility? DRG also relies on its party members, both to not bring guaranteed crit and for a good partner to utilize tether.

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My response was a rebuttal of claims made about me. I can see why it would read as pretentious, and although it could probably have been written better, If someone says I do not care about X Y Z, I should be in the right to say such a claim against me is false.

No. What I said was not "I do not care about your opinion if you parse green" it was "if you don't even play the job you opinion means less on this subject to me".

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Originally Posted by Theihe

You are mistaken.
I perform better at NIN than most of the people in this thread, if they even play the job AT ALL- which seems to not be the case for a lot of these complainers. Pray excuse me if I don't take some people's criticism seriously regarding a job they do not play, as they tell me how I'm supposed to feel about a job I've sunk thousands of hours into.

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Originally Posted by Theihe

It is relevant that people saying "this change is bad" doesn't actively play the job. A lot of the comments are from DPS saying "oh I like putting abilities under trick", which, while being wholesome, isn't relevant to if this change is better for the NIN players themselves.

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Yeah this I see, in my opinion it's not the biggest deal. It's also not inherently that some players "work around trick" is that our openers are created with Trick in mind- so as long as they dont drift they end up with stuff under TA. So it certainly is not always (sometimes, but most of the case, definitely not) people optimizing- just playing their job correctly. It's worth keeping in mind that a majority of statics do not heavily optimize. And having one job overly reliant on people doing so when other jobs are not is a reasonable thing to adress from a development standpoint.

No, where did I claim this?
If you mean in the long post I qouted on the first page, it has sections cut out and is part of a larger discussion regarding how FFLOGS can be used to indicate job health- but isnt necessarily a good indicator for the actual numbers.
I'm not really sure why aDPS is mentioned here. I feel like I'm missing context for this entire section.

Cute smiley, very passive agressive and charming, still not relevant to the claim I was originally making.
I said "The first, and only real hurdle, is beating the DPS check once, at which point it gets continously easier. If one job has a rougher time meeting that check because "they scale harder later" then they, and their team, is arbitrarily taxed."
The argument being "by having one job that is such an outlier in terms of the balancing - while all other DPS have been shoehorned into it this 2 min window- a change was expected".

I don't know if this section is an argument against me, but I agree to some extent. I can see why they're (the devs) taking the easy way out, and for me personally I am looking forward to the change. The devs have absolutely no clue what to do about TA, or a ton of other jobs in the game at the moment, and just having them put trick on 2 min (after repeatedly getting nerfed due to being way too strong) is a huge relief over the other options we could've gotten.
I'll just throw it out there that I don't find NIN's TA being this whole end all be all of it's kit as if it's the only thing making NIN into NIN. I think it lost it identity already with emnity management going out the window, debuffs not needed to be kept up, and so on. Because really TA isn't support, it's just roundabout damage. Mantra, Feint, Arcane crest and other such abilities are the real "support" jobs- NIN hasn't been a real support for years at this point.

I want to stress that it's not an "argument", it is an "assumption". I'm guessing they will just move everything (or nearly) onto a 2 min rotation with just about the same value because trying to juggle 20 raidbuffs is impossible. Especially when you try to scale it up.
So not an argument, I'm mainly guessing what their reasoning is.

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Originally Posted by Theihe

No. What I said was not "I do not care about your opinion if you parse green" it was "if you don't even play the job you opinion means less on this subject to me".

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I didn't ask. I posted this thread as feedback for the devs. I really don't care for how you hijacked this thread to boost your ego, especially since you brought FFlogs data into this.

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Originally Posted by AlunKha

I didn't ask. I posted this thread as feedback for the devs. I really don't care for how you hijacked this thread to boost your ego, especially since you brought FFlogs data into this.

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You posted on a public forum, having people post their opposition to your opinion is expected.
I'm not here to "boost my ego", I don't need any such thing. And to claim I've "highjacked" this thread is laughable

At the end of the day, bringing up how good and great and optimal you are as ninja doesn't matter. Square doesn't care about that kind of audience lmao. Square only really pays attention to the casual audience. Me, and I think some other people in this thread, are complaining so square can know that this change not only annoys some high-end raiders, but also medicore casuals like me. Not that they will read these threads anyway. Boasting about how you're in the top 1% of ninja players in uwu or whatever your feats are isn't gonna change anyone's mind. While I can't speak for all casuals, gutting trick but making us do like 0.5% more damage or whatever the changes will be is not worth it. No one is gonna play nin just because of that small buff, and a lot of people who play Ninja will be alienated by this change.

I do find it funny that one of your arguments is that most statics don't optimise trick. Seems like a skill issue to me. Learn to optimise or don't, once you have higher ilevel dps checks will get easier anyway, so I doubt it matters in the long run. The answer to people not optimising trick isn't to remove trick lmao. World first raiders are gonna optimise trick, that is good for them. Casuals, like me, who clear much later will have higher ilevel, and just want the clear instead of obsessing over logs. This change helps no one.

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Originally Posted by Manofpassion

At the end of the day, bringing up how good and great and optimal you are as ninja doesn't matter. Square doesn't care about that kind of audience lmao. Square only really pays attention to the casual audience. Me, and I think some other people in this thread, are complaining so square can know that this change not only annoys some high-end raiders, but also medicore casuals like me. Not that they will read these threads anyway. Boasting about how you're in the top 1% of ninja players in uwu isn't gonna change anyone's mind. While I can't speak for all casuals, gutting trick but making us do like 0.5% more damage or whatever the changes will be is not worth it. No one is gonna play nin just because of that small buff, and a lot of people who play Ninja will be alienated by this change.

I do find it funny that one of your arguments is that most statics don't optimise trick. Seems like a skill issue to me. Learn to optimise or don't, once you have higher ilevel dps checks will get easier anyway, so I doubt it matters in the long run. The answer to people not optimising trick isn't to remove trick lmao. World first raiders are gonna optimise trick, that is good for them. Casuals, like me, who clear much later will have higher ilevel, and just want the clear instead of obsessing over logs. This change helps no one.

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Well for the casual audience this change is good. It puts less emphasis on heavily optimizing group synergy, making it more PF friendly.

I'm not a "top 1%" player, and certainly not in uwu.
I also want to point out that I was not the first person in this thread to bring up "speedrunning and optimization". It was the individual responding to me- claiming that I shouldn't have a say "because I don't do such things" who brought it up in the first place.

But if someone do not play a job, why should I be forced to agree to their opinion? I am not, and shouldn't be.
I do not mean to be condecending, but I want my job to feel good, viable, strong, PFable- for me. I want my job to feel like I can throw myself into a PF KFF party where people have garbo gear, unoptimized rotations, slight drift, and whatever- without feeling like "oh man the other people in my group are performing as such a sub-par level that I'm almost griefing them by not playing SAM/MNK".

My argument is not that mosts statics don't optimize trick. My argument is exactly what you said - that once you kill/get gear/ the dps check becomes easier, so having one job being the outlier of scaling poorly early tier before such gear is probably something they are now looking into adjusting. Do not paint my argument as something it is not simply because you have decided that "I am the opposition" and you must disagree with me.

Trick isn't removed. We get to keep trick making things consistent for the NIN player themselves- and we get another raidbuff on 2 min filling the same purpose as trick does now. But trick in and of itself isn't "removed", it just changes the functionality for players other than the nin.
And on that note- we can't actually know for sure because we don't have the patchnotes.

World first raiders optimize everything. This doesn't inherently change anything for them outside of the fact that instead of having to optimize every 60 sec (if they have a nin) they focus on the 2 min window, no matter if they have a NIN or not.
For "casuals" this changes nothing realistically. It actually makes it more casual friendly.

My argument is that people need to calm down until we actually see what kind of changes will be happening. But from the very little we know so far, this doesn't seem to have too huge implications. The only thing being that Raidbuff/Mug alignment might be scuffed- but even that we can't know for sure.
This change with Trick was sort of expected when they brought everything into a 60 sec cycle, and realized Trick was far too powerful further into scaling.
I am (with caution) hopeful that NIN will be brought up to the same slot at MNK- good aDPS, good rDPS, scaling at the same rate as most of the other melees. And that isn't something I can complain about. If making trick personal and giving us another raidbuff is the way they have found to achieve this then I will trust that things will work out.

Personally, I don't think 'casual' or 'hardcore' is a distinction that is needed in a thread like this, I think we can all agree that removing the only remaining 60s party buff from the game will result in a little bit of boredom for us all, especially considering most jobs have either a mini burst phase every minute that they can put under Trick Attack(GNB/MNK) or they can stock and burn resources under Trick Attack(DNC/DRK).

The original purpose of this thread was meant to express that playing around a 60s timer is fun for most of us who like that kind of thing, we are not advocating for NIN to be weak or anything of the sort, we just want to not have our only remaining little bit of fun outside of the 2 minute window be stripped away. This is not a "NIN main vs Non-NIN players" situation, please do not make it such.

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Originally Posted by Theihe

You must also consider that NIN's lower aDPS also affects how other job's buffs scale.

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It was in reference to this comment. Unless you had an entirely different meaning, it didn't really come off that way.

Still not convinced that NIN is making clearing content the first time any harder. You'll get less out of Trick, but you're also getting less out of every other buff, like Astro cards which seem to be in a similar boat.

DRG and MNK going from a 90s job to a 120s job made sense - as 90s comps in SHB were not great compared to the alternative. Synergy back then was awful. You can still clear content all considering though. A 60s job that already aligns every 120s being changed doesn't really make sense. I get that you're trying to figure out SE's reasoning for the changes, but it seems more like you were making an argument about why NIN's change was justified / is for the best. I'm sure there were alternatives to solving this without homogenizing all the melee together.

NIN does perform worse with certain jobs, but it also performs much better with others. But if you take a NIN with those poor jobs then that's on the player or team. Similar to if you took a PLD + WAR into the group as a DRG or SCH. You will do less, you are taxing yourself. This isn't any different. Or if you brought your NIN into PF and nobody played into Trick - that's a skill issue, not a flaw with Trick Attack having an 'unconventional' timing. They're in Savage content, I would at least expect some effort if they want to clear.

Having strengths and weaknesses is a good thing, and I don't agree all jobs should be viable for every situation. Else all jobs are homogenized and if one job does the same thing as every other job + another thing, then it becomes the obvious winner. That's a problem. We're heading in a direction where we have less intricacies/nuances that removes flavor from the game that would otherwise make it interesting. People reacting to these changes aren't in the wrong, this has been an ongoing trend since SHB when job design has been gradually simplified.

If this truly is SE's reasoning, they should reconsider how crit buffs are calculated with the new SAM changes that will undoubtedly hurt DNC/BRD/SCH, or rework a job like PLD that does significantly less into buffs than the other tanks. This change with the addition of the push for guaranteed crit doesn't really line up. Nor do I think the NIN player-base wanted or asked for this.

Removing the 60 secs timer will indeed be quite boring. While the trick change won't affect the ninja's gameplay, just the nin's personal enjoyment and the ability to have fun, people seem to keep forgetting ffxiv is a team game. If a class can provide an opportunity for other team members to burn resources at one minute timers and make their one minute bursts less boring, that is something to be encouraged. It might not be “utility”, but it is something unique that only ninja can do, and it enhances the enjoyment of both the nin and the other party members. Making other party members working around one job isn't a new concept. While I am no black mage expert, I have been told working around black mage's inability to move for certain mechanics is useful for those who want to optimise and help their black mage. Working around nin's one minute buff seems a lot easier than black mage's entire gameplay. Coincidentally, yoshida mains black mage. No correlation here.

I can also safely say that I do not wish for nin to be brought up to the same slot as monk. If I wanted to play monk, I will, quite shockingly, play monk. I believe someone here called new nin riddle of trick and brother mug - I must say I agree. To me it seems like those who agree with square's changes just want to play another class. Im not sure what's stopping them truth be told. If you are griefing by not playing sam/monk, play sam/monk, it's just that easy. If you are playing e.honda in street fighter and are complaining about why you don't play like a shoto, just play ryu, or ken or sakura or Akuma. Why i myself and other nins won't just play another clas is simple. There is no other melee dps with a buff based playstyle. They remove this, and we either have to play the 3 melee dps clones, or dancer. I do hope the devs aren't balancing the game around pf of all things. As a pretty garbage player I can safely say that if square balances around the kind of people in pf we are all doomed.

People's frustrations with trick seems to be because people don't optimise it. Pretty sure the solution to that is asking square to actually make the hall of novice not crap, and teach people these things. Trick is just a symptom of square's unwillingness to teach new players basic stuff. They can have an advanced course after arr, which teaches slidecasting, snapshotting, and optimising raid buffs and the like, which will give you an exp boosting ring, maybe to level 70 but just 10% this time. Square wants to make the game more casual friendly, this is how you do it. I only learned these things via Googling. By putting these things in game, casuals will appreciate it and git gud. Hall of novice rework is a better spend of time and resources than making ninja unfun.

Something I see no one talking about

If players want the game to have more small-scale hard content, NIN would be in a terrible place if it was too rdps reliant. The game is balanced around 8 man content first, and the criterion dungeons are a compromise. Current NIN would either be unviable/highly discriminated against for small scale hard content, or the hard content would be too easy when trying to balance so that even a NIN could clear.

I'd like to believe the dev team thought about this, and that's where these changes came from.

That is actually a very good argument. If this trick change was to balance savage level 4 man content, I am willing to accept it in exchange for more challenging content. Even so, square should have come out and explained it was done in relation to criterion. We still don't know anything about criterion, so why these changes are happening now before an ultimate instead of the patch that introduces criterion is bizarre. I will say this is a good theory though, but does square have the foresight to do such a thing? I must say I'm not too convinced they do at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Manofpassion

That is actually a very good argument. If this trick change was to balance savage level 4 man content, I am willing to accept it in exchange for more challenging content. Even so, square should have come out and explained it was done in relation to criterion. We still don't know anything about criterion, so why these changes are happening now before an ultimate instead of the patch that introduces criterion is bizarre. I will say this is a good theory though, but does square have the foresight to do such a thing? I must say I'm not too convinced they do at the moment.

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Mhm, yeah given that I was in the same boat of "this is an unnecessary change", I thought about dungeons first which wasn't a big deal. But then also Criterion popped into my head, and unless they completely abolish DPS checks (and even then, thinking about players who wanna clear fast), they will probably need to do something to NIN, which is in a completely unique spot compared to other jobs.

I would like to believe that this change opens up avenues for a more involved attack rotation in future expansions (I think Raiton being a combo action is an awesome concept, and kinda hope that it goes back to giving you two stacks of raiju ready or that there's a bigger finish in the future), but I'm not too hopeful there. I'm not sure where the homogenization is leading towards, and I think that's the main unnerving sentiment of most players right now, especially for jobs like Dark Knight who consistently get more screwed over every expansion.

Although, if balancing for criterion is their main concern, wouldn't the physical ranged classes have to be completely reworked so they can pull their weight? I have no idea how dancer and bards perform in 4 man dungeons, but I imagine quite a bit worse compared to other classes like monk or reaper. I still think this theory is the best explanation we have right now, but it does raise more questions than it answers. The minds of the devs are truly mysterious. Current trick wouldn't do too well in 4 man dungeons, but probably still better than dancer, bard, and maybe even mch. Those jobs would logically be prioritised first since they're the ones that needs to be adjusted the most? I really wish that in the 9 years of leading ffxiv yoshida would have learned that explaining things = good, but I guess not.

I imagine that bringing the current ninja into the new savage dungeons would still be okay, and the dps check is still irrelevant if the whole party is competent. I don't think those dungeons are created for the casuals anyways so their experience in going through it isn't wholly relevant either. If anything the shift to adps is only going to be noticeable for logging. Speed running dungeons will still be adps focused and realisticly the nin changes won't have any serious benefits.
What Nin lacked in adps they make up for in burst damage. pick your targets and save your resources and i think most content can be done even if your adps is low and don't forget they have to balance these solo savage dungeons for dancers healers and tanks too.

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Originally Posted by Manofpassion

Although, if balancing for criterion is their main concern, wouldn't the physical ranged classes have to be completely reworked so they can pull their weight? I have no idea how dancer and bards perform in 4 man dungeons, but I imagine quite a bit worse compared to other classes like monk or reaper. I still think this theory is the best explanation we have right now, but it does raise more questions than it answers. The minds of the devs are truly mysterious. Current trick wouldn't do too well in 4 man dungeons, but probably still better than dancer, bard, and maybe even mch. Those jobs would logically be prioritised first since they're the ones that needs to be adjusted the most? I really wish that in the 9 years of leading ffxiv yoshida would have learned that explaining things = good, but I guess not.

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The physical range would perform the same as we always do in dungeons. We use stuff on cooldown, and do not save anything unless there's a window where a target cannot be hit or a fight is about to be over, since we can overcap on gauge, cause drift for our openers and 2m rotations, or lose our buffs. Or at least that's how I've always done it, no clue if it's optimal or not for dungeons since I've never really looked into that. Our damage is often good enough to push and I've even out DPS'd people easily on a DNC/BRD (which always makes me cry).

Assuming the new criterion dungeons function the same as regular dungeons but just harder, then trick shouldn't be an issue I imagine? Physical ranged dps is indeed good enough for dungeons - if criterion has enrages I imagine the dps check will still be quite low, to make up for comps like paladin, astro, summoner and dancer. The hardest part of dungeons is mob packs anyway, and nin has ludicrous aoe damage that doesn't rely on trick. The more I think about it, the more I doubt the change is for criterion. Changing trick now for a mode we know nothing about and have no set date for is a poor decision in my opinion.

I really wish the devs would just explain things so we didn't have to all grasp at straws. They claim they want feedback on the forums, but its hard to give any feedback when we are told next to nothing. Some people here have given good sensical feedback on what little we have, like aloneatsea and kackal_jackal, doing the devs job for them. Imagine how much better the feedback would be if we just knew a bit more.

I feel like it's also an attempt to clean up the possibility of drift on the party buff as well. I can't really think of any other party-wide buff that is essentially behind a "gate", others are just "Push button; Get/Give DPS."

I realize _good_ players won't do this, but if you for some reason use your mudras, you need to wait for the mudras to come back in order to use Trick attack. Also, to get it put out as soon as it comes back, you have to be casting Suiton before it's ready which may lead to some drift. Now, if a NIN messes that up in anyway, it'll only affect them.

I think the balancing for Criterion is definitely more likely to be the reasoning, but at the very least, it will clean that up a little as well.

i feel like people who drift trick will drift mug as well. Trick was always a timer for you to know when to dump your dps be and it so happened to buff the party as well. Now that the party buff is on a completely arbitrary button, lower skill players are probably gonna drift that more because their focus will ways be on trick attack to self buff.

Yeah. If you can't use trick on time and cooldown, there's nothing to suggest that people will magically know how to use brothermug on time and on cooldown.

Even then, I think people saying trick being drifted is terrible is making it seem worse than it actually is. Trick is gonna get drifted throughout a long fight, no doubt about it. We're only human, drifting it by a millisecond or even 2 secs is not the end of the world. While i have only cleared up to p3s, I personally have never delayed trick so much that it falls behind the rest of the group's raidbuffs significantly. Perhaps 2 seconds off at most, but that's not the end of the world. Other classes are played by humans too, so chances are, they will also drift slightly. We're called trick bots, but I doubt even the best ninja in the world can avoid drift with laser precision like a robot could.

A lot of fights have downtime, so there is time to recover if you did somehow mess it up entirely. You want to hold raid buffs before limit cut on p2s, and you want to do so for adds on p3s and on the second experimental gloryplume/trail of condemnation. These are checkpoints throughout the fight that allow you to try to fix things, providing gaps that give time for trick to go off cooldown and reset. I take these times gratefully as a chance to recover should I have messed up terribly. The fights are, in my opinion, already designed to account for natural human error. If the fights are designed to already mitigate any potential drifting, then why change the jobs at all?

I really don't think that 'solving people drifting Trick' is the reason for these changes. Mug is an oGCD, which means it runs roughly the same risk of drifting as Trick (assuming Suiton is up), and pretty much every other party buff in the game. I don't think managing Suiton is a major problem for people either - if it were so difficult and problematic to manage Suiton, I imagine the need for it would have been removed a while before these changes.


The criterion dungeons thought is a good one, though one I also draw issues with. If the idea is the make Ninja more powerful in four-man content (presumably Criterion dungeons), you also have to consider other aspects of the kit that are available in dungeons -- namely Hide. Ninja is uniquely able to get a portion of its burst back on demand almost for free. Given that dungeon mobs tned to come in packs, leaving combat for two seconds to refresh your mudras is not a tall order. Additionally, if Ninjas were underpowered in 4-man content, I'd expect to see them be drastically underepresented in endgame dungeon speedrunning -- which doesn't seem to be the case. Admittedly, I don't have all the numbers, and certainly I don't have access to the level of information that SE has, but I'd be very surprised if this was the catalyst. Perhaps I'm very wrong, and Ninjas are simply weaker in 4-man content. If that were the case, I'd rather Criterion dungeons have their own balancing system or be removed entirely. Quality over quantity. I'd much prefer to have a single raiding system that feels good, rather than two systems where my job feels bad. Obviously, this won't happen, but these are my feelings on the matter.

I feel inclined to take the devs at their word -- that Trick is being demoted for 'alignment' issues that i've yet to see exist. Until we see the full extent of the changes, it's very difficult to draw any other conclusions.

Nevertheless, I have yet to see any satisfying reason for the Trick changes, and if the developers are indeed reading this, I must again ask that they reconsider these changes. I've yet to see anyone genuinely excited about them -- only those who think it's fine, and those who are vehemently against it.

The only delays of TA in the current tier that comes to mind for me is in P2S and P4S Phase 2.
In P2S before the limit cut happens you'll just waste TA if you use it on CD there, you just wait until the mechanic is resolved and then re-open with TA.
And in P4S Phase 2 on Act 2, I dunno if it's the norm or if TA just comes off CD there at the end of it I honestly can't remember.
But I know that I re-open again after the last tower has gone off.

I've read some people say that they don't use TA on the adds in P3S I dunno why tho, TA is off CD again when the boss becomes targetable may as well use it.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

The only delays of TA in the current tier that comes to mind for me is in P2S and P4S Phase 2.
In P2S before the limit cut happens you'll just waste TA if you use it on CD there, you just wait until the mechanic is resolved and then re-open with TA.
And in P4S Phase 2 on Act 2, I dunno if it's the norm or if TA just comes off CD there at the end of it I honestly can't remember.
But I know that I re-open again after the last tower has gone off.

I've read some people say that they don't use TA on the adds in P3S I dunno why tho, TA is off CD again when the boss becomes targetable may as well use it.

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Sorry, I meant using trick for the small birds, but then not and holding it on the large birds. By holding it there, trick and any potential drift will reset. I guess if your dps is so high that the birds die before it resets makes it a moot point though.

Simply removing criterion dungeons instead of balancing the few jobs that need adjustments for it is a poor idea imo. People have been begging for small scale hard content, and it'll definitely be more casual than 8 man raids, but the answer isn't to delete it if two or three jobs have trouble, just to balance for it instead.

The answer could also be non obvious. Perhaps throughout certain parts of a criterion, certain parts of the dungeon experience are more streamlined. Perhaps AOE dps is more important in certain sections than single target performance is, and ranged dps could simply be better at this than what's available to most melee dps. Perhaps black mage is stronger than Red Mage at single target, but weaker at AOE. The balance team could be crafty about how to deal with that while keeping raid balance intact.

However, specifically in the case of Trick, more frequent buffs is proportional to more party reliance, as we've determined time and time again on this thread. Bringing the party buff alignment up to speed with every other melee makes the melee role easier to balance within itself, no doubt.

I'd also like to point out that people online who voice their opinions the most are more than likely the people who do not like the changes, especially before they've played it. People who like the change are more likely to determine they've liked it after having played Ninja, which is why you're probably not seeing as many posts compared to the more fervent reaction to "We're making mug a party buff and removing it from Trick!" IMO, to make a balance decision before we've got our hands on the changes is silly, especially if they feel like they've got a good reason for this. I don't feel like it'll change how ninja plays much regarding the rotation other than a shift in ogcd placement (and mug isn't a very powerful ogcd anyway aside from ninki gain) because aside from TCJ and Phantom Kamaitachi, Ninja is all about bursting every 1 min and we still have that with 6.1 Trick. But we'll see. Regardless of whether the change is good or not for gameplay feel, paired with the right potency changes I definitely see it as a buff in 4 man and solo content for Ninja right now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

The only delays of TA in the current tier that comes to mind for me is in P2S and P4S Phase 2.
In P2S before the limit cut happens you'll just waste TA if you use it on CD there, you just wait until the mechanic is resolved and then re-open with TA.
And in P4S Phase 2 on Act 2, I dunno if it's the norm or if TA just comes off CD there at the end of it I honestly can't remember.
But I know that I re-open again after the last tower has gone off.

I've read some people say that they don't use TA on the adds in P3S I dunno why tho, TA is off CD again when the boss becomes targetable may as well use it.

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You can have a full burst trick (sans tcj) on limit cut in p2s if you open with a first gcd trick, and the rest of your group is doing the 5 min pot window.

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Originally Posted by RaevusAstra

I'd also like to point out that people online who voice their opinions the most are more than likely the people who do not like the changes, especially before they've played it. People who like the change are more likely to determine they've liked it after having played Ninja, which is why you're probably not seeing as many posts compared to the more fervent reaction to "We're making mug a party buff and removing it from Trick!" IMO, to make a balance decision before we've got our hands on the changes is silly, especially if they feel like they've got a good reason for this. I don't feel like it'll change how ninja plays much regarding the rotation other than a shift in ogcd placement (and mug isn't a very powerful ogcd anyway aside from ninki gain) because aside from TCJ and Phantom Kamaitachi, Ninja is all about bursting every 1 min and we still have that with 6.1 Trick. But we'll see. Regardless of whether the change is good or not for gameplay feel, paired with the right potency changes I definitely see it as a buff in 4 man and solo content for Ninja right now.

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I think alot of the discontent from ninja stems from the fact that the changes they made will more detrimental than beneficial. By unlinking the raidbuff from trick means that mug now has to be used off cooldown and is another thing people will have to micro manage whereas pre 6.1 mug can be drifted into trick window or be used off cooldown, and newer players who forget about pressing it means it's not the end of the world. It adds another level of needless restriction to the ninja rotation. Yes we don't know what the specifics are but with what little information we have, we can speculate on the following:

mug debuff is longer than trick buff = play as normal keeping mug off cd
trick buff longer than mug = a world of pain where you need to trick, fill with gcds, mug and then burst.

the best case scenario is you need to make sure you have another cooldown to be pressed immediately, worst case scenario you're burst window is more complicated.