Ninja and the Mudra System. Suggestion to Make Ninja Smoother and Better For everyone

[Shurrikhan]

Much of your "make it better" seems to revolve around "remove the things people might use by mistake" and that is a slippery slope of these ever was one. You cannot excell at something if you can't make mistakes, and choosing which mudra to use is it's own game, part of the class. true, you might sometimes and up with wrong skill "woops, wanted Doton" or even the dreaded bunny hat, but that is the challenge of it, to not make those mistakes.

Honestly, I wouldn't even mind if bunnying became impossible because each mudra can only be used once. I don't see that nearly so much as a reduction to skill ceiling nearly as to packet loss penalty (which even at a relatively low ping, this game seems to have in spades compared to my other MMOs). It takes one all of 10 attempts, tops, to learn how not to bunny. Whether your internet will thus oblige is a different story.

Ideally, I'd like the Ninjutsu cast itself to be a bit quicker, Fuma faintly stronger, and nothing to break Ninjutsu combos, but that's wholly superfluous, and largely just comes up with a unique bandaid for a game-wide issue.

In the end, what Mudras need most is the same as any other skill: a larger window of the prior animation that accepts queues, and perhaps further allowance for clipping based on some manner of client-side timer to make up for remaining ping-varied activation times. In a game so dependent on double (or in Suiton's and Doton's cases, quadruple) -weaving, it's not acceptable that a whole half the playerbase is penalized for doing just that, sometimes to the point of the choice being inferior.

[FallenArisen0990]

Sorry OP, those Mudras are Homeage to my love for NIN in XI. If anything, I want more Mudras. I don't want NIN to become a glorified BLM.

[Aomine1992]

The mudras are great, ten chi jin well that's a different story to me it's kind of a crappy skill but besides that I like how nin plays

[Titor]

The reason I don’t play Nin too much is due to mudras. They kind of interrupt the flow of combat to me, and it’s harder with even slightly high ping.

[Multifridgeman]

I couldn't stand to be without the mudra sounds and screen effects, it all plays into the ninja aesthetic.
If the latency is getting you down, just use fuma instead of raiton. Spam the Ninjutsu button instead of the mudra buttons, only press them once. Don't fret over a bit of gcd clipping, it won't matter outside of the two highest savage instances.

[Cakekizyy]

I prefer combo system instead of hotbar clutter of button for each skill.

[princesst3a]

No thanks. The main reason I even switched my main to NIN is because, as a PS4+controller user, the Mudra system helps immensely with hotbar clutter by locking all the Ninjutsu abilities behind different combos of only three button presses. Perhaps I could get around that by experimenting with my hotbar setups, but if they changed it, I'd be really upset.

Other than that, as people have said: it makes the job fun and unique, it adds to the aesthetic, etc. It's really not hard to memorize the button combos to prevent your DPS from suffering, and if you do have an issue with it seeming "clunky" or you mess up your combos too often, then stick to a different job as your main.

[Altena]

Hell to the no.

The Mudra system is what makes NIN stand out. Otherwise it is just "any old DPS"...
That's like saying the Sen system for SAM should be replaced with 3x skills on fixed cooldowns.

Now I am saying all of this as an Australian player, who plays with 250ms+, and mained NIN during FCoB when the mudra latency was at its worst, and before they changed to the client-side mudras that we have today.
In fact the only issue you should be having with mudras now days is that your buddy who lives next door to the data centre is probably doing more DPS than you.

If you want a latency-friendly job, don't play NIN.

As for "changing the mudra system".. The most I would agree with changing is the ability to weave other skills between mudras without bunny. By that I mean Jin > Spinning Slash > Chi > Gust Slash > Ten > AE > Ninjutsu.. This would reduce the effect on latency due to the ability to weave mudras between individual GCD, instead of cramming it into one.

But no, don't touch NIN.

[Joe777]

As a Ninja main here is my 2 cents:

Making Ninjutsu no longer need Mudras is absurd. Ninja have always used hand signs to trigger their Ninjutsu, and this idea of yours Etherblock would take away a key aesthetic of Ninjas.

It is no secret Hyoton is very underused for sure, but removing Suiton is a big no. Think of it like this: Trick Attack (and the previously removed Sneak Attack) are stealth abilities used on enemies when they can't see you. The water from Suiton can be used as a sort of cloak as well, as the water would hinder sight thus allowing a stealth attack to happen. Yes Ninja would benefit from being able to use Trick Attack anytime it's ready but aesthetically it would not do to make it that way.

Finally there is the matter of Ten Chi Jin. You want to remove those individual Mudra so all Ninjutsu have their own individual buttons with no combination requirements, and yet you want to keep the ability that is actually named after the Mudras? That is another issue your idea has. Sure you could just change the name but that isn't really the point. I mean what would you change it to anyway?


So there you have it: all the aesthetic issues with your idea. You basically want to take away the identity of the Ninja for quality of life improvements which, by the way, are not as good as you think. Also as has been said already, it would bring hotbar clutter. Furthermore, when you take into account ways to reset the Mudra cooldown you are actually nerfing Katon by making it have its own cooldown. Also Raiton is not completely superior to Fuma Shuriken: it benefits from slash debuff and has longer range. It's true even with slash debuff Raiton is still stronger but there is still the range gap. In conclusion, while some of your ideas prove to be buffs, some prove to be nerfs, and the overall impact is you want things to take less time to execute, which can actually backfire if it screws up rotations too much. Therefore, this idea is definitely not gonna happen, and Ninjas everywhere would riot if it did.

P.S. This thread is probably in regards to mudra latency, which is understandable, but the ideas in this thread are not the answer.

[Vnolan]

Why not both? Just add the ninjutsu as skills and allow people to choose if they want to use mudra or not.