A Ninja's gripe thread (Heavensward)

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the best place to post this but couldn't really find anywhere better suited for this.

What was with the decision on removing Perfect Dodge and replacing it with Shade Shift? I, along with tons of others can not comprehend why SE would pull the plug on Perfect Dodge.

We've all left feedback via in-game interface, but I'm curious as to the communities thoughts. Do you welcome the removal of Perfect Dodge in exchange for Shade Shift?

Well one example is to ravana ex. If you could dodge the prey mark or a swift liberation mark, it would render that mechanic useless and could very well determine wether someone lives or dies. Im guessing they removed it in order for the players to be able to get away with ignoring certain mechanics. It can be seen as both a buff and a nerf depending on how much damage you would be taking but the old effect and some of the introduced mechanics would allow for some things to be easily avoided. Also sorry for any typos xD I'm new to forum posts but not the game.

I actually like it a bit better than perfect dodge, simply because it has more uses. It was cool to mitigate one physical hit no matter how damaging it was, but alot of incoming damage is magic based and overall i think it will be more useful.

Perfect Dodge and other abilities like it are schizophrenic abilities. That is to say, they're either hideously overpowered, such as eating a tank buster to the face and living, or they're incredibly useless, usually because an auto attack comes in and eats the buff before the tank buster slams into you.

A good example of this is Shelltron. It sounds like a great ability on paper, but in practice the inability to actually force it to fire for a buster means that you cannot guarantee its usefulness, which severely diminishes its effectiveness, as an individual auto attack will strip it off more often than not.

By turning the ability into a 20% of max health ability, they've effectively smoothed out the 2 binary extremes in favor of a very consistent damage absorb. The benefit of this is that you now know what the ability will do. The drawback is that you can't eat Nael diving on you after the tank died during the golem phase and you had top aggro.

As for my personal opinion, I neither like nor hate it, as a 20% absorb is incredibly useful even in high-end content, but the ability to laugh at one physical ability can also be useful, so it's a mixed bag or side-grade, if you will.

I guess they did it to lower NIN up time. NIN could avoid a lot of mechanics with perfect dodge. For example in t9 you could ignore iron chariots and just stay on the boss while other melee had to back out then go back in. Can not really see any other reason than that for them to change it.

I once used perfect dodge on Kaliya Resonance(sp?)..that was a amazing feeling.

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Originally Posted by SewDough

I, along with tons of others can not comprehend why SE would pull the plug on Perfect Dodge.

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I thought that it is a system-wide fix and BLM abilities was fixed too. SE seems to want to remove "absolute defense" abilities from anyone who is not a tank.

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Originally Posted by Felessan

I thought that it is a system-wide fix and BLM abilities was fixed too. SE seems to want to remove "absolute defense" abilities from anyone who is not a tank.

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Seems like it, from what i remember they also nerfed MNKs featherfoot and DRGs keen flurry due to not scaling with STR anymore is also a lot weaker.

I've noticed while leveling a rogue that Shade Shift doesn't even provide a shield vs everything. It seems like it doesn't shield vs magical damage at all. Eg. Halatali, when the firesparks combine with the fire, or basic elementals in Costa del Sol.

Im standing to believe that Shade Shift not working on Magical attacks is either a bug or an error in the tooltip.

I actually like Shade Shift better for soloing, but Perfect Dodge was better for raids.

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Originally Posted by MrCookTM

I actually like it a bit better than perfect dodge, simply because it has more uses. It was cool to mitigate one physical hit no matter how damaging it was, but alot of incoming damage is magic based and overall i think it will be more useful.

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Easy there, Satan.

Too many raid attacks and high damage things were only magical. They weren't physical before because that was unbalanced for some classes (BLM and NIN after). And yet, there's a lot of balanced ways to deal with physical attacks that couldn't make it into mechanics because some classes were broken with it. So in an effort to allow more physical based mechanics without the inbalance, Manawall and Perfect dodge for nerfed/removed. Now, bosses with Ravana, who are mostly physical can exist.

That's my theory anyway.

I really enjoy the changes, and I play both blm and nin. Can't make everyone happy though.