NIN changes changed nothing, and that's why they shouldn't exist

[Shurrikhan]

I too feel like if this were a situation where they asked everyone, except NINs, how would these changes benefit them

I feel like NINs identity/presence watered down

Randomly Sampled Non-NIN Player: "Well, I really don't like having to pay attention to my major CDs or gauge-banking more than once every two minutes."

Though, for that reason, it wasn't just NIN's identity, in practice, getting watered down. Tanks, Monk, MCH, SMN, RDM, and SAM all took a bit of a gutting, too, at least relative to old NIN comps, due to losing their one-minute alignments.

[baklava151]

I'm not sure if this is true or not, so take it with a grain of salt, but I remember reading about an interview with Naoki Yoshida where he mused over how he thought the game might become boring if everything was moved to a two-minute window -- sometime in the SHB era? Endwalker still made the changes it did, though, and Ninja wasn't allowed to escape unscathed.

Someone provided me with it on Reddit, I'd love to know what changed between the media tour and EW release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXkyq_yUMjI&t=607s

[aloneatsea]

Someone provided me with it on Reddit, I'd love to know what changed between the media tour and EW release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXkyq_yUMjI&t=607s

Oh wow, that's much more recent than I expected. Given the poor reception to the Samurai changes & the Trick Attack changes, I wonder if they'll backpedal... the points Yoshi-P makes as told by Mrhappy here are exactly the sentiments being echoed by disgruntled players. I can only hope they'll listen to us, and give us a little bit more room to show some skill expression by reverting Trick. Ideally, reverting the Kaiten removal, too, and preferrably the auto-crit.

Maybe if I huff enough copium, they'll give healers some DPS buttons, too...

[Eorzean_username]

I kind of like the Mug/Trick change, solely in the sense that it gives Ninja a slightly different vibe now between Odd and Even windows, kind of like Monk has, except through target debuffs. But that would be true even if Trick was still a partywide effect, it just comes from having multiple debuffs to stack and alternate.

Anyway, I think that part of the discussion that gets missed here is that while it was cool and interesting to time Gauge dumps, etc. around Trick Attacks when a Ninja was present, those Jobs just rubber-banded back to "Okay, whatever" about it when a Ninja wasn't present.

I get that some people would argue that it's actually a positive feature if a player has to adjust their rotation from party-to-party, but the fact that rotations basically pivoted around one out of 19 Jobs was a little weird. And, honestly, had been weird since ARR and the introduction of Trick Attack, leading to the "Ninja or bust" mindset that dominated for a loooooong time.

Although, speaking of this, as a weird outlier, there's still Astrologian... and in fact, playing around "Surprise! A card for you! Parse well soon!" can be trickier than the very-predictable and "for everyone" Trick Attacks of yore.

This was actually something that I noticed when PF raiding as Machinist in Shadowbringers — loading into a party without Ninja or Astrologian was... noticeably blander, because my odd-minute Hypercharges felt arbitrary and "hollow". And even for Astrologian, it only mattered if I was randomly bestowed a card at the correct time around minute marks.

So trying to zoom out and be objective here, I think that removing partywide Trick Attack actually just shined a spotlight on the bigger issue, which is that most Jobs feel like they're doing nothing but a bland, treadmill, zombie-shuffle filler phase for something like 100 seconds at a time each cycle.

I'm exaggerating a bit, but it really feels like the classic raiding rotations were held together by Trick Attack as a lynchpin to give them focus and interest, even though there were enough Jobs in the game that Ninja was not guaranteed in any party or team — but like, the design seemed to assume a Ninja anyway. I think that the consequences of that design approach have had long-term fall-out.

So it's less about Trick Attack itself, and more about how dreary and... like... arbitrary? A lot of Job cycles feel during the odd-minute phases. And I think that, in turn, is affected by how FFXIV has — over a really long time — conditioned players to feel like they're not happy or satisfied, or even doing anything correctly or effectively, unless everything that they do on a timer is crashing into some kind of damage-multiplying buff effect.

So without 60s Tricks, there's this sense of existential anxiety where it's like, "But I can't dump Gauge now. I have no buffs to dump Gauge into. My life is a lie. All is vain." Like playing FFXIV when you know you're supposed to be writing a term paper. Or eating dessert before dinner. Everything just feels off, and not as satisfying.

But it's not really Trick Attack itself that's so important, it's that:

1. Players don't feel right dumping resources or cooldowns without knowing the damage is being amplified in some way, because many years of gameplay have taught us that is a correct philosophy to approach from when trying to improve performance.
2. Many Jobs don't have anything internal to time themselves around and to reward timely dumping.
3. Removing Trick very abruptly exposed all of this, bare and raw, even though it was actually there all along.

I say this because if you compare Jobs like Dragoon and Monk, that have internal cycles of their own buffs to bank around and funnel into, having or not having Trick Attack doesn't feel as stark — they still get that juicy, reassuring "I'm putting everything into a buff!" gameplay, regardless of what's going on externally.

Conversely, Jobs like Dark Knight, Red Mage, and Machinist feel comparatively more gross without Trick Attack around, because they have a lot of "hangnail" Potency that they're forced to dump in odd minutes to avoid overflowing. And while that's technically "fine", because it's just how they're designed, it doesn't feel fine.

ie, dumping everything into Blood For Blood every 60s just feels better than doing a naked Hypercharge at random. Trick Attack was the "donor 60s buff" for Jobs that weren't blessed with their own, but still had big potency to drop on a 60s accumulating cycle, like Dark Knight.

So I think that the actual issue is that the 2-minute buff system is too spaced-out, and leaves long gaps that feel bland and unsatisfying for a lot of Jobs.

One perspective is that players just need time to get used to this new "buff-naked-buff" rhythm, after so many years of being conditioned to try to cram everything into clockwork damage amplifiers.

A different perspective is that players just like cramming everything into clockwork damage amplifiers, and so what should actually happen is to take the current 2-minute cycle, and crunch it down into a 1-minute cycle. Now, everyone can dump their gauges into buffs every 60s, and can breathe a sigh of relief.

A third perspective is that players really just like having something to time their resource expenditures around, and so actually, it doesn't matter if it's party-wide or not. Party buffs could remain at 2-minutes, but every Job gets some kind of personal buff to activate every 60s — "You get a No Mercy, and you get a No Mercy, and you get a No Mercy...".

Now players get the satisfaction of "Ahhh, I spent my gauge inside a damage amplifier", but SE's design for 2-minute burst phases can remain unchanged. And, in fact, it would make hitting your personal 60s cycle like clockwork even more important, to keep your No Mercy Clone aligned with the 120s mega-burst cycle (in an ideal situation).

Anyway, and then Trick Attack wouldn't feel weird being a personal buff, because now everyone has a 60s personal buff, and you've got Mug to contribute to the 120s "big burst".

[aloneatsea]

snip

I think you've hit on something really crucial about the other classes. The changes in Endwalker to move every other class to strict two-minute cycles have, as Yoshi-P anticipated, made the game boring in the absence of variance. Of which there currently is none. It's all two minutes, and nothing inbetween. Unless, as you said, you happen to have a personal buff, or the odd button on the rare and elusive 90-second timer.



I'd like to offer a fourth perspective, however - that having a variety of buffs on somewhat different timers is both good for the game, and interesting to play around. Shadowbringers, if I recall correctly, with the exception of the ranged physical classes, was rather well balanced in terms of pure numbers, with all classes dealing within 2-3% of each other's average damage. I can't speak to how it felt to optimise during that period of time, but I believe many more party buffs were on strange timers. Dragoon's Battle Litany was on a 180s cooldown; Trick on the 1-minute cooldown, Brotherhood on the 90s cooldown, Devotion on the 180s cooldown, etc etc etc.

In my opinion, it's good when the strength of your burst, when you pot, when you pool gauge and when you spend it varies from party to party. It's exciting! I'm playing a team guide because I want to play a team game, so who my teammates are and what they're playing should have an impact on how I choose to play my class.

This does, of course, come with the caveat that some compositions are going to be inherently stronger than other due to the way buffs stack, or whatever. I'm... willing to take this on, frankly. Unless I'm mistaken, and Shadowbringers balance was actually a huge mess, it seemed rather feasible to do.

I hate the idea of personal buffs, though I get that this is likely just a me thing. I just don't get any endorphins from boosting... my own damage. It's not fun, in my opinion, to hit a button that makes me and me alone stronger every minute. I think it's good that classes like this exist for the types of people who enjoy this style of gameplay, but I'd hate to see every class go this way -- and for Ninja to stay this way.


Let buffing classes stay buffing classes, and please give me my one-minute party buff back.

As for shifting everything to a one-minute cycle, I'd much prefer that to the two-minute cycle, honestly, if I had to choose. At least things would be a little busier! That said, I'd still much prefer overall having buffs on a mix of timers. 90s, 180s, 60s, 120s... it sounds good to me.


I think Trick will always feel strange being a personal buff, however. It's always been a party buff, so anyone who played Ninja pre-6.1 will feel it. That, and the naming just... doesn't sound like a personal buff. Because it isn't, it's a debuff on the enemy which somehow only affects you. I've thrown sand at the enemy's eyes and now he's taking more damage from me... but not from my party?

Thematically, I think it needs some work...

[Roquepo]

I'd like to offer a fourth perspective, however - that having a variety of buffs on somewhat different timers is both good for the game, and interesting to play around. Shadowbringers, if I recall correctly, with the exception of the ranged physical classes, was rather well balanced in terms of pure numbers, with all classes dealing within 2-3% of each other's average damage. I can't speak to how it felt to optimise during that period of time, but I believe many more party buffs were on strange timers. Dragoon's Battle Litany was on a 180s cooldown; Trick on the 1-minute cooldown, Brotherhood on the 90s cooldown, Devotion on the 180s cooldown, etc etc etc.

In my opinion, it's good when the strength of your burst, when you pot, when you pool gauge and when you spend it varies from party to party. It's exciting! I'm playing a team guide because I want to play a team game, so who my teammates are and what they're playing should have an impact on how I choose to play my class.

Regardless of composition, everything aligned at the 6 minute mark back in Shadowbringers, so pot timing was worse then that it is now, IMO.

A posible solution to TA being the outlier could be just making more 60s raid buffs. I personally would be happy with that.

[aloneatsea]

Regardless of composition, everything aligned at the 6 minute mark back in Shadowbringers, so pot timing was worse then that it is now, IMO.

A posible solution to TA being the outlier could be just making more 60s raid buffs. I personally would be happy with that.

That's a fair assessment! I didn't get to play much in terms of high-end content in Shadowbringers -- I was pretty much just learning the ropes, so my experience is very limited.

Part of me is toying with the idea of "would reducing the pot cooldown to 4:00 be overall better for pot variety between groups", but I'm not sure if this would even change anything. It'd mean an extra pot in some fights, most likely, which would force strict pot timings in favour of triple-potting. Maybe's that's worse...? I'm not sure.

Personally, I'd be fine with more 60s raid buffs, so long as they're not identical to Trick. Trick's power should be unique to Ninja -- but there's no reason we couldn't have, say, a Direct Hit buff, or a Crit buff on a similar timer.

[RyuuZero]

I like that Mug now does something, but true that it's weird what they did to Trick Attack..

personally I would welcome the change that Mug does the personal damage buff and Trick Attack stays Trick Attack as it always Trick Attack

[aloneatsea]

I like that Mug now does something, but true that it's weird what they did to Trick Attack..

personally I would welcome the change that Mug does the personal damage buff and Trick Attack stays Trick Attack as it always Trick Attack

The problem with this is that Trick not being on a one-minute cooldown introduces a weird inconsistency in the mudra system where in odd windows you have a mudra to expend that isn't going to line up with any buffs whatsoever (where you'd usually cast Suiton).





Unless you're suggesting they keep the cooldowns the same (Mug 2min personal, Trick 1min party), which case, uh, sure? Doesn't fix the problem of Mug trying to do two things, but I get Trick back, so I'm happy.

[butchersblock]

Unless you're suggesting they keep the cooldowns the same (Mug 2min personal, Trick 1min party), which case, uh, sure? Doesn't fix the problem of Mug trying to do two things, but I get Trick back, so I'm happy.

Tbh I would much rather Mug be a 2 minute personal buff than a Ninki button. I really like the idea of the double debuff, but not at the cost of Trick no longer being raid-wide.