Trick Attack

[AlunKha]

Please don't delete Trick Attack :(

I currently main SMN on my Aether character, Bard on my Materia character. Both jobs feel much better to play when there's a NIN in the party putting Trick out on the off minute window. Not just because I can do more damage, it just feels good. When that Trick is up I can go into Phoenix, or I can dump soul gauge on an Apex Arrow. DNC can put their Flourish into Trick, RDM's their melee combo, DRG's a whole BotD window, almost every job has something they can put into Trick. Please don't get rid of it :(

[Ransu]

They are not removing it, just changing it.

[DubiousDisk]

If you bothered to actually read what they said instead of hot posting, you'd realize they aren't removing it, they are just moving the party damage increase to Mug, and making Trick Attack a personal damage increase.

[nguyentri11]

The OP's point is the removal of Trick Attack during odd minute windows not the changes to Trick Attack and Mug.

[Aravell]

I agree with OP, Trick Attack provided engagement to other jobs in the way of an extra damage buff to play around, if the party buff was shifted to a 2 minute cooldown in Mug, all jobs would basically play the same, no more managing your burst in a 1 minute window while making sure you have cooldowns up to also burst in the 2 minute window, everyone will just stock around 2 minutes. I hope the dev team will reconsider this change.

[Hawuhawuu]

Let me start off by saying I'm content with the state of nin and don't think they need changes. They are in a fine state since they scale the best as tiers progress. The increased crit/dh from better gear makes the rdps from ta scale very well.

I see the trick attack change as an overall nerf to non static nins as well as a potential job killing change. I clear savage 1-4 on 3 diff jobs in pf. Even though nin isn't the best dps the group always has higher dps. Ta on a 1 min window is a visual indicator for buff alignment that people focus on taking advantage of. Also the opener will change and nin doesn't have room for ogcd's. We can no longer use mug for bunshin and won't be able to use it in our burst window most likely. Mug will need a minimum of 400 potency to not make it a dps loss for the 40 gauge in old ults. I expect them to either buff nin to top tier on dps by increasing personal ta values or to completely kill the job forcing the low population of nins to swap jobs due to the uncertainty of their direction.

I do think these changes without more information is inconsiderate to the nin raiders. As we are left the dilemma of continuing to finish gearing up the job to bis for the ult or have to change jobs now not to gamble with the uncertainty of the changes. The nin design team already has proven itself to have bad ideas with the ew release state which caused a massive decline in the player base.

[VentVanitas]

I do think these changes without more information is inconsiderate to the nin raiders. As we are left the dilemma of continuing to finish gearing up the job to bis for the ult or have to change jobs now not to gamble with the uncertainty of the changes. The nin design team already has proven itself to have bad ideas with the ew release state which caused a massive decline in the player base.

I can't fathom the reasoning behind it. The dev team in their own words said that they didn't want to make too many changes before dropping an ult, yet here they are reworking TA/Mug into something that will potentially flip the job on its head. I think what's even more inconsiderate is withholding this information for so long up until two weeks before the patch drops.

[Hawuhawuu]

I can't fathom the reasoning behind it. The dev team in their own words said that they didn't want to make too many changes before dropping an ult, yet here they are reworking TA/Mug into something that will potentially flip the job on its head. I think what's even more inconsiderate is withholding this information for so long up until two weeks before the patch drops.

My main question for them is do we not put up mug at the normal raid buff alignment and do ta first which clips ogcds during raid buffs to lose a gcd and potentially a bhavacakra during our burst window/buffs. Which would also make us not be able to use bunshin during that window or we clip again. If we put up mug at the regular time we have to insert a gcd before trick attack and bunshin clips losing a gcd. Either way there's 3 ogcds we need to use bunshin which needs mug and ta some are delayed or not get used which results in atleast a 850 potency loss with buffs and bunshin damage. It seems like a no win scenario with job skill needs/design

Its potentially crippling, I hope we get some info before the next reset.

The only potential change I could think of is more % damage on ta or 1000 potency and some extra seconds on it to offset it going up after raid buffs.

The only plus is right side carries over to rdps so I can gear it in time.... But I can't even find an ds static due to not knowing if melee or rdps...

[Theihe]

Right so let me be the one person to go against the grain here. The change to TA is a good change.
NIN scales incredibly hard as the tier progresses, quite frankly, it scales too hard. The tradeoff is that NIN, in the beginning of the tier, is incredibly undertuned. TA doesn't scale as hard, and NIN's personal DPS is a lot lower than it's other melee counterparts.
This is completely nonsensical- as the DPS check is only ever an issue at the beginning of the tier. As soon as you get gear any and all DPS checks become arbitrary. And having one job specifically be overly reliant on scaling harder isn't healthy. Everything is on a 2 min buff rotation (and fights are better designed to take the two minute windows into account than the one minute windows).

This will change nothing for NIN at all, other than keeping MUG on cooldown as opposed to drifting it to manipulate Ninki generation every 2 minutes. They could even buff Trick's length allowing you to actually squeeze your entire burst into it's duration, a welcomed change to improve game feel.

Any job being such a slave to it's raidbuff, and inherently a slave to it's team's performance, is arbitrarily punished by other people's poor performance. And NIN is the only job in the game currently punished twice as often for other people's mistakes. Someone dies and get's ressed? They'll have Death Debuff during one raidbuff window- unless you play with a NIN where their contribrution will get cucked twice.

Bringing NIN up to the same aDPS level as all the other melees will make it less group reliant, making the job more PF friendly, and even making it better to bring for the first weeks of prog. You shouldn't hit enrage week 1 and think to yourself "well damn, if I had played MNK/SAM this probably wouldn't have been an issue". And in a static environment you're also asking groups with a NIN to optimize twice as often, pool resources twice as often and do perfect burst windows twice as often (which during prog is a lot more punishing). For the groups who want to commit to such a thing they'll be rewarded (early tier) with contribrution slightly lower than any other melee- and (late tier) will get contribrution equal to the rest of the melee roster.

You must also consider that NIN's lower aDPS also affects how other job's buffs scale. This change will negate that and make this specific aspect less of a painpoint in balancing- without actually changing anything for the NIN themselves. The absolutely best possible outcome.



I broke this down in the beginning of this tier in regards to the 6.08 buffs- and it accurately reflects NIN's lower contribrutions in comparasion to the other DPS when gear doesn't scale as hard. One can check FFLOGS now to see how NIN is definitely up there on rDPS, while there's still quite a sifnificant discrepancy in aDPS (as it currently should be with the current TA- as if their aDPS was higher NIN would shoot through the roof on rDPS).

To add to this, to get the most out of a raidbuff it requires some level of optimization.
For any rDPS heavy job to actually contribrute it requires other people to actually press their buttons, not die, not eat dmg downs and not drift their burst out of buff windows. And that's 8 people.
"Selfish" DPS should have more personal DPS output, yes, but they should under no conditions outperform jobs that depend on group co-ordination.

Current standings in rDPS:

Current standings in rDPS sorted by DPS:

Current standings in rDPS sorted by MAX:



Current standings in aDPS:

Current standings in aDPS sorted by DPS:

Current standings in aDPS sorted by MAX:


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"But isn't the MAX entierly reliant on RNG? Good crit for the player themselves- their teammembers, and even what jobs they bring?"
Yes. And such RNG and uncertainty applies to all of the jobs- but least of all the "selfish" DPS as they have one factor (themselves)- as opposed to rDPS jobs' 8. The fact that it is RNG reliant isn't inherently fantastic though, I will admit.

"So how would we find an accurate estimate of each job?"
With the way FFLOGS currently work- we can't. However there would be good reason to atleast aknowledge the 100th percentile parses, especially when the rankings of the jobs ends up changing. So for these current statistics:

rDPS DPS:
MNK->RPR->BLM->SAM->DRG->NIN->RDM->SMN->BRD->DNC->MCH

rDPS MAX:
MNK->BLM->DRG->SAM->RPR->NIN->DNC->BRD->RDM->SMN->MCH

aDPS DPS:
SAM ->BLM ->MNK ->RPR ->DRG ->NIN ->MCH ->RDM ->SMN ->BRD ->DNC

aDPS MAX:
SAM ->BLM ->MNK ->RPR ->DRG ->NIN ->SMN ->RDM ->MCH ->BRD ->DNC

The (1 week) difference in rDPS DPS between MNK and NIN is 231.
The (1 week) difference in rDPS MAX between MNK and NIN is 267.
The (1 week) difference in aDPS DPS between MNK and NIN is 497.
The (1 week) difference in aDPS MAX between MNK and NIN is 516.


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Melees and Casters would lose nothing if their potencies got buffed and had their raidbuffs turned into a personal buffs, akin to Death's Design. If anything, it would finally allow players to say "which job do I actually enjoy playing?" as opposed to "man I fuckin wish I played SAM instead of NIN this expansion cause I feel like I'm actively griefing my team".
Not to mention that this would also give the devs a more streamlined approach.

The game would be better if the devs had fewer variables, because trying to balance 8 different raidbuffs scaling multiplicatively off of one another is an absolute nightmare, and as a player it feels absolutely garbage to play a low aDPS job, arbitrarily "taxed" because 5% of your DPS has been stripped away from you and thrown to the mercy of your; completely random and often incompetent; team.
Forget this stupid "mobility tax" here "difficulty tax" there, the only thing this thread has been taxing is my patience.
This game isn't hard.
No jobs are hard.
Your job shouldn't do more dmg because it's "hard".
Your job should do more damage because doing damage is fun.
Feeling like you're always capable of beating any other job in the game if you become good enough; is fun.

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I am honestly stumped by the negative feelings the community has towards this TA change, because I see nothing but positives. I feel it's an amazing change, and I literally couldn't be happier unless they also made Kassatsu guarantee a crit.

I don't care NIN scales hard late tier. If you beat the DPS check then that's it. You get more gear making the DPS check more and more arbitrary. The fact that TA scales hard is just a toss-up. If you could already beat the DPS check before you scale hard then what's the point of doing more DPS?

I am excited to have my job feel strong, always, independently of if my team decided to eat chalk during raid.

[Manofpassion]

Honestly, by making trick attack personal and removing its whole gimmick of damage buff for party minute, to me they've just kept the trick attack name but replaced it with a move that does something else entirely. As a ninja, and i think I speak for a good portion of the player base, we want to support or buff our team. If we cared about big personal dps, we would just play black mage or samurai - i think current trick is synonymous with ninjas identity. That's not necessarily a bad thing - lots of classes are synonymous with certain skills, such dancer's dance partner, astrologian's play cards, and drk's tbn. Lots of people enjoy those classes because of those skills in particular.

Why ninjas gimmick is being changed to two minutes is something i don't understand. One minute raid buffs will end up lining up with two minutes anyway, so there is synergy still. The game is already chock full of 2 minute buffs, one buff being unique and on a minute cool down is just more interesting. I'm not an expert on game balance, but surely one buff being on a minute cooldown won't break the game - if need be, nerf it to be a 4% damage buff instead. We won't be happy about it, but at least it won't make us have to relearn our rotation for the third time in a year. Honestly, if they want us to not be a slave to trick attack as much, reduce the power of the buff, but make stuff like raiton or bhava do more potency. I'm no game designer, but that seems like a reasonable enough suggestion.