The Culling: Moving into 5.0

I think they should increase Raiton potency a bit more so the potency is worth clipping into GCD. Right now it's nearly always better to use Fuma, making Raiton a bit pointless. If they increased it's damage or gave it a lasting DoT or something that would be cool. As much as I like the Ninjutsu mechanic, I wonder if they might simplify the skill a bit more, though I suppose it's supposed to be a surrogate for casting time like Iaijutsu is.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Even if the auto-attack animation doesn't go off in the middle of another animation, the damage will still occur. Only casts can delay auto-attacks when they might otherwise have finished, and there is nothing capable of resetting their progress. This ends up a rare issue managed only by luck for Paladins during Requiescat, but is irrelevant/inexistant for all other jobs, especially now that booking/caning the boss isn't remotely worth crowding melee in the vast majority of cases.

If you really need the silence, save it for that; otherwise use it on CD unless it'd delay a more important CD. It's free damage.

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I get that it's free damage. But it's only 80 potency. Look at other melee DPS oGCDs.
Spineshatter Dive/Jump/Mirage Dive/Forbidden Chakra/Elixir Field/ etc. 80 potency is crap. Why not make it 150 potency or 210 potency etc. 80 is just...why?

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

I think they should increase Raiton potency a bit more so the potency is worth clipping into GCD. Right now it's nearly always better to use Fuma, making Raiton a bit pointless. If they increased it's damage or gave it a lasting DoT or something that would be cool. As much as I like the Ninjutsu mechanic, I wonder if they might simplify the skill a bit more, though I suppose it's supposed to be a surrogate for casting time like Iaijutsu is.

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The main issue with this is that Fuma Shuriken damage is boosted by dripping blades, while Raiton is not, since it is magic damage and dripping blades only boosts physical damage. If they would fix this so that dripping blades boosted all damage, then Raiton would be used much more frequently, even without a potency increase.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

I get that it's free damage. But it's only 80 potency. Look at other melee DPS oGCDs.
Spineshatter Dive/Jump/Mirage Dive/Forbidden Chakra/Elixir Field/ etc. 80 potency is crap. Why not make it 150 potency or 210 potency etc. 80 is just...why?

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My guess is that the potency was used as a minor knob to tune NIN dps output. Considering how much utility and extra rDPS a NIN brings, it is important to be careful about how much pDPS they get. I do agree that using the skill feels really lame though, considering how little damage it is. But it is kind of cool that NIN is the only melee DPS that gets access to a silence. It's just stinks that silence mechanics are used so rarely in encounter design.

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The main issue with this is that Fuma Shuriken damage is boosted by dripping blades, while Raiton is not, since it is magic damage and dripping blades only boosts physical damage. If they would fix this so that dripping blades boosted all damage, then Raiton would be used much more frequently, even without a potency increase.

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So Fuma is 288 and Riaton is 360. Raiton is still stronger but not really once you count the loss of GCD clipping. That said, if Raiton was intended to be stronger (given that it's a higher level skill), there's not really a point in using it, right? Unless the mob has a magic vuln debuff

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

So Fuma is 288 and Riaton is 360. Raiton is still stronger but not really once you count the loss of GCD clipping. That said, if Raiton was intended to be stronger (given that it's a higher level skill), there's not really a point in using it, right? Unless the mob has a magic vuln debuff

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It's actually even closer than that, since Fuma Shuriken is also slashing damage, so it is buffed by the slashing debuff as well. I'm not sure if these buffs are additive or multiplicative, so I will show both calculations below to get the actual potency

Additive: (10% slashing + 20% physical = 30% total) => 240 x 1.3 = 312 potency
Multiplicative: (1.1 slashing x 1.2 physical = 1.32) => 240 x 1.32 = 316.8 potency

That combination of buffs, combined with the GCD clipping from Raiton does absolutely result in Raiton being a loss in most DPS situations. But if this were changed so that Raiton was buffed by the Dripping Blades Trait, then:

Raiton: 360 x 1.2 = 432 potency

This change would easily make Raiton the superior choice, thus rewarding the more difficult mudra and making more sense.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

I get that it's free damage. But it's only 80 potency. Look at other melee DPS oGCDs.
Spineshatter Dive/Jump/Mirage Dive/Forbidden Chakra/Elixir Field/ etc. 80 potency is crap. Why not make it 150 potency or 210 potency etc. 80 is just...why?

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That's still a Spinning Edge per minute. And as its main purpose for being in your toolkit is the silence, consider how much more potency you'd be losing by delaying it if it actually had 200 potency or so. At that point you'd rather force a Ranged to take a silence or the like, bloating their rotation, and taking away from Ninja's long-time supportive saboteur theme. It's free damage, and it can amount to half a percent or so over a whole fight, but it also means your party has a silence nearly on demand, if you know what you're doing, without any cost to better Role Actions.

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Originally Posted by Tex_Mex

It's actually even closer than that, since Fuma Shuriken is also slashing damage, so it is buffed by the slashing debuff as well. I'm not sure if these buffs are additive or multiplicative, so I will show both calculations below to get the actual potency

Additive: (10% slashing + 20% physical = 30% total) => 240 x 1.3 = 312 potency
Multiplicative: (1.1 slashing x 1.2 physical = 1.32) => 240 x 1.32 = 316.8 potency

That combination of buffs, combined with the GCD clipping from Raiton does absolutely result in Raiton being a loss in most DPS situations. But if this were changed so that Raiton was buffed by the Dripping Blades Trait, then:

Raiton: 360 x 1.2 = 432 potency

This change would easily make Raiton the superior choice, thus rewarding the more difficult mudra and making more sense.

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My only issue with the way the two work is simply that Dripping Blades clearly does not say "physical damage" on its toolkit. It says "Actions". Everything you can do is an action: every weaponskill, every spell, every ability, and even all things which are none of those three. If Sprint dealt damage, it would be affected, according to that toolkit.

What I actually like about the Raiton/Fuma apparent inequality:

• In typical rotation, a tick of Shadowfang will always go to waste. This isn't avoidable except through planned compromising clipping until extremely high Skill Speeds which are simply not viable for Ninja due to the way Skill Speed works (since it has no animation time scaling and no oGCD damage bonus). This means that there are certain amounts of clipping permissible both on the basis of each rotational string (timing to Shadow Fang) and in macrorotation (timing to Duality and TCJ).
• Of the two, only Raiton can reset Shukuchi, so if you need the teleport coming up, you're going to have to make that ~.33-second clip (from minimum SkS to max out TA).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

My only issue with the way the two work is simply that Dripping Blades clearly does not say "physical damage" on its toolkit. It says "Actions". Everything you can do is an action: every weaponskill, every spell, every ability, and even all things which are none of those three. If Sprint dealt damage, it would be affected, according to that toolkit.[/LIST]

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This was identified early on in 4.0 as a translation error, as it correctly states physical damage in the Japanese version. Why it is 4.3 and it still hasn't been corrected..... who can guess lol.........

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Originally Posted by Tex_Mex

This was identified early on in 4.0 as a translation error, as it correctly states physical damage in the Japanese version. Why it is 4.3 and it still hasn't been corrected..... who can guess lol.........

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Oh, I know. I just don't remotely consider that acceptable, as it's more than enough difference to adjust the breakpoint completely. It honestly disgusts me.

I like that Fuma is generally, but not always, stronger, as it doesn't carry the Shukuchi bonus, and generally leads to smoother gameplay. But I'm not okay with blatant misinformation in official tooltips and on official websites.

3 major patches without a fix, when plenty of other, far less significant typos have been almost immediately remedied, is no longer a matter of mere neglect.

Not so much a cull as a reversion:
I do wish they'd put back all the healer skills they took and put into role actions.
Esuna, Rescue and Protect at the very least.