6.1 Ninja just doesn't feel good to play.

[Manofpassion]

Ninja is far from the only one. This happens with most proc/combos. Look at reaper. The only reason it ever felt punishing with NIN was when it was a movement ability too and couldn’t be used during Zodiark spins or putting you too far into a crystal during lightwaves. Which you could just adjust for.

Idk about that. If dancer gets a proc, and they don't use it right away, it's still there if you accidentally press cascade. The recent flourish changes even mean you can't overwrite stuff anymore. Bard doesn't lose straight shot if he uses heavy shot when the proc happens. Neither does red mage if they accidentally use jolt instead of verfire and verstone. There are probably a lot more examples.

It seems to me that reaper and ninjas are the outliers in this regard. Why?

I'm also unsure about mug being a better raidwide. It's just brotherhood without the chakras. I'm no math expert, but I'm pretty confident in asserting that old trick was better in that department.

[AoifeAogane]

Ok after all these negative comments, that I can't comprehend, I have to say something so SE doesn't do something stupid!

I main Ninja and played it since shadowbringers, after 6.0 ninja felt really bad!
It got better with the next couple of buffs but ultimately I swapped roles to Samurai!

Now after 6.1 dropped I instantly came back to Ninja! (Also partly because of the Sam changes)
And after testing it out, I am overwhelmed by how much better Ninja is now!

Mug felt like a complete useless spell that just gave you one extra bhava but now it's a very important raid buff and has a purpose!

Trick attack is also way better now, as it gives you a meaningful personal dmg boost on top! This was very much needed!

Before, I felt like Ninja was only tolerated in groups as your trick attack bitch,
but now you are a serious dmg dealer, that can finally keep up with reaper and other melee dps!

Very good changes! Keep up the good work square enix!

Your opinion is valuable, and I respect it. That said, today we shall be enemies. If you like the personal damage buff, why not put that on mug instead?

[Darksoul9669]

Your opinion is valuable, and I respect it. That said, today we shall be enemies. If you like the personal damage buff, why not put that on mug instead?

Because it being on Mug means that it doesnt drift and lines up with other Party wides for longer regardless. The 120 second CD, no drift and longer duration is extremely beneficial. TA being a buff/debuff at all is the issue because it will always have drift. TA at this point should be something that leads into an actual burst phase over a buff/debuff so we dont just get the same drift issues regardless.

[Manofpassion]

I am very confused. Does mug have some sort of special property where it doesn't drift? You can still drift 2 minute buffs, like technical step or divination? You can drift any ogcd in the game. Like, I know I drift standard step and flourish sometimes. But them's the breaks. You drift an ogcd, things don't line up as well. If we're saying old trick is incredibly easy to drift just because it's on a one minute cooldown, we're gonna have to rework a lot of skills. Carve and spit, dream within a dream, riddle of fire etc. You can still drift trick now, and you will lose damage since it won't overlap with mug and other raid buffs as much. I've seen many a player drift their emboldens or chain stratagem. If two minute raid buffs dont drift, then someone better tell pf.

If the devs want to alleviate the impact of drifting on ninja, they failed. Before, you shouldn't drift trick. Now you should not drift trick or mug. They just gave us another important button we can't drift, surely.

[aloneatsea]

Ok after all these negative comments, that I can't comprehend, I have to say something so SE doesn't do something stupid!

I main Ninja and played it since shadowbringers, after 6.0 ninja felt really bad!
It got better with the next couple of buffs but ultimately I swapped roles to Samurai!

Now after 6.1 dropped I instantly came back to Ninja! (Also partly because of the Sam changes)
And after testing it out, I am overwhelmed by how much better Ninja is now!

Would you care to elaborate on what it is about 6.0 Ninja that felt bad? The only real changes from 5.x were the addition of Raijus, Phantom Kamitachi and the change in Ninki generation. If you're referring to how Raijus were quite impossible to play around in Zodiark EX, I completely understand, but this was fixed in 6.05. If you're referring to the Ninki generation, this unfortunately has not been fixed, but was made worse by the Mug changes in 6.1, so I would encourage you to reconsider.

Mug felt like a complete useless spell that just gave you one extra bhava but now it's a very important raid buff and has a purpose!

Mug already had a purpose -- generating Ninki -- and stole Trick Attack's purpose on top of that. Are you really fine with that? The identity of Ninja being taken by a non-ninja-like ability, and making Ninki generation feel even more clunky... if you're fine with that, I can only respect your opinion and disagree, but I really cannot understand that...

Trick attack is also way better now, as it gives you a meaningful personal dmg boost on top! This was very much needed!

Trick Attack provided the single most powerful raid buff in the game. It provided the equivalent of 30s of 5% vulnup every two minutes, and by coming up at 1-minute intervals naturally aligned with the burst windows of any job with excess gauge to build and spend. I cannot emphasize enough how powerful this way. How is a personal damage buff better or more meaningful that the most powerful party buff in the game? Not to mention, thematically it makes more sense. The only argument I could understand here is that Ninja needed more personal damage, and there are plenty of ways to achieve that without gutting the class.

Before, I felt like Ninja was only tolerated in groups as your trick attack bitch,
but now you are a serious dmg dealer, that can finally keep up with reaper and other melee dps!

I'm sorry that you had such an experience in raiding/dungeoning with other people, but Ninja was quite objectively the strongest dps at the end of 6.08. It absolutely did not need to be any stronger. Reaper, in turn was actually the weakest melee DPS job. Ninja never needed to keep up with Reaper. Reaper needs to keep up with Ninja.

I can respect if your opinion differs from mine, but there are quite a few points throughout your post that appear strange to me. I hope you don't mind that I've highlighted them.

[aloneatsea]

Because it being on Mug means that it doesnt drift and lines up with other Party wides for longer regardless. The 120 second CD, no drift and longer duration is extremely beneficial. TA being a buff/debuff at all is the issue because it will always have drift. TA at this point should be something that leads into an actual burst phase over a buff/debuff so we dont just get the same drift issues regardless.

Any ability on the oGCD will drift; this is not unique to Trick Attack. Kassatsu, Dream within a Dream, Embolden, Brotherhood, Mug. I don't know what you're thinking, but drift can be almost entirely mitigated by simply pressing the button on cooldown. Changing Trick to Mug will have absolutely no impact on this whatsoever, so this is not a good argument for keeping the changes to Mug and Trick.



Rather, please revert Trick Attack to being a one-minute party buff.

[AoifeAogane]

I don't understand the drift argument. Now if I miss my 2 minute window, It will either be off for the rest of the fight, or held back until the next one. Having TA on a one minute window gave me some wiggle room to correct an earlier mistake.

[aloneatsea]

I don't understand the drift argument. Now if I miss my 2 minute window, It will either be off for the rest of the fight, or held back until the next one. Having TA on a one minute window gave me some wiggle room to correct an earlier mistake.

I also don't. Maybe they're referring to if you accidentally use a mudra charge which is supposed to have been saved for Suiton, getting your next charge makes using Trick on time extremely tight? Everyone's done that at least once.



That said, I don't understand the "TA being a buff/debuff at all is the issue", because Mug is also a debuff... actually, I would argue that being a buff is something of a core aspect to being a, ahem, party buff.

The benefits of the party buff being on Mug are far outweighed by the downsides. It really does belong on Trick Attack.

[Inanegrain]

From previous patch nin to now, the difference is minimal, I'd still wonder why it even happened, but it's whatever.

Mug's now outside of TA window and has NIN dump ninki to avoid overcap, freeing up OGCD space during TA. Giving in some leniency on what to adjust the remaining ogcds during mechanics or any other reason.
At most, there'd be 1 raiju that'll be outside of raid buffs, I think it's plenty enough, could optimize more, but that's another thing.

Drifting's usually skill issue, sometimes it's mechanics, sometimes it's cause by death and that's incredibly bad. DWAD tends to drift in 60 windows but solved by using a gcd, everything should fit as long as it's just 1. It would still drift in 120 windows, makes you miss a raiju (optimization thing) just to avoid drifting when there are still weave slots available. Feels incredibly strange when it drifts over 4 seconds and 2's already bad enough.

As I've complained before, mostly from the niche encounter complaint I made, I'd rather not have jobs with "useless" debuffs that could've been buffs instead. Currently more likely to overcap on buffs now, but eh, they're both niche issues that FF14 shouldn't have in the first place, exists anyways.

SHB (not initial release ofc) nin's the most... stable.

Mug felt like a complete useless spell that just gave you one extra bhava but now it's a very important raid buff and has a purpose!

Trick attack is also way better now, as it gives you a meaningful personal dmg boost on top! This was very much needed!

Before, I felt like Ninja was only tolerated in groups as your trick attack bitch,
but now you are a serious dmg dealer, that can finally keep up with reaper and other melee dps!

Very good changes! Keep up the good work square enix!

Nin has been a serious damage dealer since they got it right in SHB.
TA's no different besides it strangely a personal buff similar to... RoF. A strange change.
Mug's also a strange change while making the TA window more flexible.

I'm not sure what prompted the change to SAM/NIN. I wouldn't say current nin is bad to play, just odd that it came out of nowhere.

[aloneatsea]

SHB (not initial release ofc) nin's the most... stable.



Nin has been a serious damage dealer since they got it right in SHB.
TA's no different besides it strangely a personal buff similar to... RoF. A strange change.
Mug's also a strange change while making the TA window more flexible.

I'm not sure what prompted the change to SAM/NIN. I wouldn't say current nin is bad to play, just odd that it came out of nowhere.

I'd have to agree. Shadowbringers Ninja felt like a great iteration of the class; my only real complaint would be that there's little to do/manage outside of Trick windows. However, that's a pretty small complaint relative to the current state of Ninja.

NIN has always brought huge damage to all kinds of content; it's been top-tier for speedrunning content, clearing savage/ultimates, even doing solo deep dungeons.

The Mug/Trick & SAM changes are really strange. I've never seen anyone ask for Trick to be changed.

A lot of people have theorised that the changes were made because of balancing for the new ultimate, but Yoshi-P's stated reason is 'to improve synergy with other classes'.

That just doesn't make sense though, because what is synergy if not lining up Trick with other classes' one-minute cooldowns?

I would say NIN has gotten worse to play than 6.08. Having Ninki gain on your party buff button feels pretty bad. In terms of actual button presses though, it's not all that different, no. Just more static than before.