Not enjoying the 5.1 Ninja changes

[Kabooa]

Ive noticed that too. Simply sharing your opinion on reddit about how you dislike the changes leads to people down-voting you for simply disagreeing with them.

Seems like a time efficiency thing to me.

A "I could spend a half hour of my life saying why I disagree with you and attempting to help you see things from my perspective, or I can downvote you so that you know I don't agree with you and I go about my day."

[Shurrikhan]

But to say "go play something else" because your ping isn't good enough is not right

Especially in a game that lets you freely play classes

True. Which is why I never said that.

At present, oGCDs pay twice their ping in additional uptime cost. We can queue them, but this does nothing for the uptime cost.

GCDs can ignore the effects of up to 250 ms of ping by queuing up to .5 seconds early and having that actually make a difference, unlike oGCDs.

GCDs are therefore clearly the superior choice for Mudras since they refuse to allow players even gameplay across even reasonable (i.e. sub-120 ms) ping rates via oGCDs.

But why (1) did they leave them unaffected by SkS (when at worst you reduce the protection to 200 ms at an impossibly high 20% GCD reduction from the stat) and (2) make the GCD cost of Ninjutsu itself so long?

[Shurrikhan]

The way it all works individually 'feels' better.
TCJ is smooth, Ninjutsu isn't messed up by ping and feels like more significant damage, SF is more accessible, Bhava/Hell Frog are available more often.
But... I seem to have a lot of downtime waiting for the GCD... as a Ninja...

See, those positives would perhaps even out against the loss of Ninja's iconic business if only they, too, didn't each have negatives.
"More accessible" = a 1-minute CD. It's no longer a part of rotational gameplay, but instead a Sonic Thrust copy.
"Available more often" = reduced to half potency.

TCJ is about the only purely positive change we got, and even then it didn't feel particularly necessary to those at low ping.

So I have to again wonder why they're focusing their efforts on slowing down all jobs to a common drawl rather than improving their netcode.

[Rivinhal]

"How exactly is anyone "censoring" opinions or "silencing" people?
People are able to give feedback..."

Discussions are civilized on this forum but on Reddit, there are hordes of people that will insult those that don't like the 5.1 changes. It's gotten to a point where most people are afraid to say anything.

That's fair I guess. But I don't really consider that "censoring" or "silencing". That's just people being rude and disrespectful because you disagree with them. I can sympathize with you, truly, but if anything it's self-censorship in a way...
Imo you shouldn't be afraid to voice your opinion. Who cares what some jerks on reddit think, you know? So what if they disagree, I'm sure there are some people who feel similarly.

See, those positives would perhaps even out against the loss of Ninja's iconic business if only they, too, didn't each have negatives.
"More accessible" = a 1-minute CD. It's no longer a part of rotational gameplay, but instead a Sonic Thrust copy.
"Available more often" = reduced to half potency.

TCJ is about the only purely positive change we got, and even then it didn't feel particularly necessary to those at low ping.

So I have to again wonder why they're focusing their efforts on slowing down all jobs to a common drawl rather than improving their netcode.

I hate to say this, but it's likely because changing jobs is easier.
But maybe it's because they're unable? Perhaps it's so spaghettified that they just can't without reworking the entire game (again). Or maybe it's just impractical to do so (whether it's because it'd cost too much, take too much time, etc.). Most likely they feel it's unnecessary when they could instead simply tweak jobs and force players to adjust slightly. Who knows.

Again, I don't dislike the NIN changes. I couldn't really play it before and now I'm having fun leveling it, so I can't be too hard on them. But if I'm being realistic, those are really the only reasons I can think of: Either it's impossible, impractical, or they're simply being frugal.

[Gun-Cat]

I honestly enjoyn the changes, mostly because it takes a lot less concentration and planning to NIN now. While it felt good to execute the old NIN well, my connection often made that more a coin toss than anything else. Only thing I really dislike is that we are doing even more ninjutsu and less blade play. The whole 123 combo seems like an afterthought now and all we do is hand gestures and summoning frogs. I'd rather have them go harder on the ROG side of things again.

[Ash_]

I've mained NIN since it first came out in 2.0. They have progressively reduced it down from the fast hitting and high crit melee rogue/assassin type class that I loved, to now a pseudo melee BLM.

Things I want:
- Original shadow fang combo restored.
- A reversal of the current focus on mudras to physical attacks. Pump the potency boosts into the melee skills, and reduce the need for mudras. I've honestly always hated mudras not because of any lag, but they were just not the reason I played the rogue class of the game. And now they have tripled down on them.
- A overall change to make the class more rogue like.

[Nakkir]

I've mained NIN since it first came out in 2.0. They have progressively reduced it down from the fast hitting and high crit melee rogue/assassin type class that I loved, to now a pseudo melee BLM.

Things I want:
- Original shadow fang combo restored.
- A reversal of the current focus on mudras to physical attacks. Pump the potency boosts into the melee skills, and reduce the need for mudras. I've honestly always hated mudras not because of any lag, but they were just not the reason I played the rogue class of the game. And now they have tripled down on them.
- A overall change to make the class more rogue like.

I can only hope that the increased focus on mudras means one day we're getting an actual Rogue class. I chose this class for the Rogue aesthetic, but now it's shifting more and more away from that. Being a Ninja's cool and all, but I just want to poke things with me stabbers.

[Shurrikhan]

I can only hope that the increased focus on mudras means one day we're getting an actual Rogue class. I chose this class for the Rogue aesthetic, but now it's shifting more and more away from that. Being a Ninja's cool and all, but I just want to poke things with me stabbers.

Probably not happening short of a newfound, shocking conviction that classes shouldn't just be stepping stones. Granted, I'd rather have them there for purposes of lore than not (it makes no sense to enter into Ul'duh utterly unaware of anything going on within yet simultaneously a member of a long-historied order of monarchical elite guards who have each already proven their skills across various combat duties), but it would be interesting to see what choices could be made through an actually inventive use of cross-class systems as to reach such (community-named) class-variants as a Brigand, Enchanter, Skylance, Assassin, Devicer, or Thief.

Given their already slow balance across DPS and low content output, though, I can't see this happening until they at least have a way of making enjoyable reiterative content as to make more efficient use of development time.

[Chill_Ghost]

Wouldn't it make more sense for the Ninjitsu action to be the only thing on the GCD while Ten, Chi, and Jin would still be oGCD? I want to at least be able to load my inputs in between GCD skills. I get that they want it more accessible for people with toasters and 56k but don't screw the class over for the people who wouldn't put too much time into learning their class anyways. Then again maybe it done like this so people can use Ninjitsu macros now?

Also has anyone gone full ham with SS yet to see if it at least feels better with that?

[Shurrikhan]

Wouldn't it make more sense for the Ninjitsu action to be the only thing on the GCD while Ten, Chi, and Jin would still be oGCD?

Not really, mostly because of the way the two systems, GCDs and oGCDs operate differently and therefore have different safety margins against ping.

Simply put, GCDs have a safety margin of up to 250s (as both the maximum queue time and minimum global recast penalty are .5 seconds) while oGCDs have... no margin whatsoever (you pay twice your ping in uptime every time).

Their biggest red card was that NIN penalized ping. At present, the only way they have to deal with that is to move the mudras over to the GCD. That being said, Ninjutsu has no need or reason to be as long as it is except to balance out the uptime costs of different mudra-length Ninjutsu casts into prettily apportioned potency values.

I'd have preferred that the Ninjutsu global recast penalty be shorter, making the whole set of actions feel more snappy, but I can see why others would rather instead just move potency into Ninjutsu and allow it to weave a single oGCD in (at up to 150 ms ping).

That said, why they didn't then use that overlong Ninjutsu to balance the different choices at all (between, say, Fuma and Raiton as used to be left to player need for Shadowfang sync, back in Stormblood and earlier) is beyond me, though... It'd be nice to see a little more variety, and of a less forced--more alignment-oriented--nature. Then again, what's there left to frequently align anything to?