The Ninja Changes Still Suck, and The Job Needs a Nerf

[Dzian]

Tbh neither Mug nor Trick Attack thematically make sense to me as a target damage buff, I think they should rename Trick Attack to '' Armor Crush '' and give it a new animation ( or keep the same I guess ) and make it the target damage buff.
And then rename current Armor Crush to Trick Attack or something instead.

Like why is Armor Crush extending a buff that makes you attack faster and why is Trick Attack the dmg thing lol?
Or even bring back Sneak Attack maybe as the dmg buff even that would make more sense.

I said something like this back in heavens ward... I think was as if they mixed the names up on dancing edge. Breaks a bosses armor and Lower slashing resistance..

and armor crush.. extend huton duration..

Would have made so much more sense had they just switched the names of those skills.

Trick attack used to be fine imo especially when you had to be in the right position to use it.. felt a bit more thematic. Critical attack that left the boss exposed for a few seconds. Exposed boss takes more damage...

Still not a fan of the gcd madras though..justnfeels clunky..

But even as an eu player I never had lag when the data centre was east coast... then they moved it and welllllll...

[Quor]

Like why is Armor Crush extending a buff that makes you attack faster and why is Trick Attack the dmg thing lol?
Or even bring back Sneak Attack maybe as the dmg buff even that would make more sense.

I've heard it was a translation/localization error that just got left as-is. If you think about it, it makes sense.

Armor Crush was supposed to be the slashing debuff. Makes sense; crush the armor, make the enemy more vulnerable to damage.

Aeolian edge (Aeolian coming from Aeolus of the Aeneid, the being known as the "keeper of the winds") was supposed to refresh your Huton duration. Makes sense since the wind-themed attack would boost the wind-themed speed buff.

Somehow those got switched and they....just left it that way, for some reason.

[Equitable_Remedy]

You implied it with your continuous passive aggressive comments towards the influx of posters unhappy with the game's direction.

I'm sorry that you read it that way. All I can say is that I literally didn't write any of that, nor did I intend to connote any of that.

how dare they not like the idea of jobs having almost nothing to do outside 2 minute windows!

Just how hard is it to grasp that not having a 1 minute window anymore makes it so there's nothing for Ninja's party members to play around? There is no longer any thought going into gameplay outside two minute windows, which only happens around 4 times per encounter.

So, your concern isn't that NIN doesn't have a one-minute burst window (ie something to do outside of a two-minute burst window)—as it might appear from the first quote—but that other jobs don't have one-minute burst windows? If that's the criticism, I would argue that that is about changes to other jobs rather than NIN. Having Trick Attack and Mug as one- and two-minute debuffs means that that the raid debuff lines up with the two-minute raid bursts and the Trick Attack debuff lines up with the one-minute NIN bursts.

Put another way, not liking two-minute raid burst windows is a fine criticism of FF14 (not one I share, but quite fair), but an odd criticism of NIN which is exactly a class that still has a one-minute burst (and a bigger two-minute burst to play with the rest of the raid).

how dare they not like the idea of jobs having almost nothing to do outside 2 minute windows!

About the bhavacakra thing - one of the fantasies of the job is is fitting every last bit of resource you have into your burst window, it's understandable why people wouldn't want to be forced to put the bhava outside trick.

I'm not sure what to take from these two points taken together. Should every last bit of resource go into the burst window (the second quote) or not go into the burst window (the first quote)?

And no, it's not "another button to press outside of burst windows." You literally press it right before trick, that's not what people mean when they ask for things to do outside burst windows.

I grant you that, if you ignore some of the buttons that get pressed outside of burst windows, there are fewer buttons that get pressed outside of burst windows.

[Amozite]

Why oh why did they have to make Mug the raid buff, I liked how unique NIN was having a raid buff every minute but now it's basically the same thing as Embolden/Divination just like most of the tank cooldowns are the same.

[RyuuZero]

I think the New Trick Attack has the same Problem as Old Disembowel.. so predictably Trick Attack will become a self-buff maybe before 7.0

[george357]

i have worked and leveled every job in this game so everyone has its good points and bad ones ninja is a decent job even worked out the different magic and attack rotations so with all these jobs to choose from if your is not working right pick another till they fix that one.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree.

NIN is still my favorite job in the game, and I'm having more fun with it now that I did in ShB.

Which has what, specifically, to do with the 6.1 changes? Not a single point you mentioned was changed between 6.08 and 6.1.

[Shurrikhan]

I've heard it was a translation/localization error that just got left as-is. If you think about it, it makes sense.

I mean, we can look up the other language's versions for "Armor Crush" right off the main site...

In Japanese, Armor Crush is 強甲破点突, respectively [Strong] [Armor/Shell] [Break/Destruction/Crush] [Point] [Stab/Skewer].

In French, it's Perce-armure.

In German, it's Harnischbrecher. (In German, "harnisch", or harness, is a general word for body armor; "brecher" should be self-explanatory.)

_____________

Trick Attack in Japanese, meanwhile, is だまし討ち (Sneak Attack / Trick Attack / Foul Play (in politics/social murder)). The French and German are likewise basically cognates for Trick Attack.

[aloneatsea]

Oh, hey, I came back and there's a ton of replies. Nice! Glad to see this kicked up some discussion after a drought of interest in the job.

snip.

I'm sorry that it wasn't painfully obvious that this isn't the character that I raid on, but to make it clear: I don't raid on this character. I live in Oceania, and levelled this character partially to check out the Materia scene, but was ultimately disappointed and returned to Primal for raiding. I use this character for socialising and playing with friends.

I actually agree with you on Armour Crush being an odd name for an ability that refreshes Huton, but I disagree on Trick Attack being weird. I've said this before, but Trick Attack evokes, at least to me, the image of a "dirty trick" like throwing sand in someone's eyes mid-fight to open up a weak spot. Ninjas aren't a Strength class, so the buff being on an ability called Armour Crush gives the wrong impression.

As for why this would stop me having fun in the game -- sheesh, I dunno chief, I specifically chose this job because it had a unique party buff and I really enjoyed offering that kind of utility? Maybe because changing Mug into a party buff made the usage of our ninki gainer much more strict, which made the rotation even worse than it already was? If you really want me to break it down, I've made a couple good threads going into painful detail about the problems these changes have caused.

I won't address your other concerns as they're irrelevant to my topic -- which is only concerned about the recent changes in 6.1 which have changed Mug into the party buff for some ungodly reason. I didn't play 14 before Shadowbringers, so I don't have any useful commentary to add there, either.

snip.

I think you've gravely misunderstood the intent of my post. I really enjoyed the vast majority of changes made in 6.0 -- the inclusion of Phantom Kamaitachi especially. Raijus I'm neutral on. However, I'm incredibly unhappy about the changes to Trick and Mug as of Patch 6.1.

Personally, I don't think that neutering a job's point of difference is worthwhile to make balancing marginally better. Given Ninja is stronger than ever, I'd say they're failing in all regards on that front. As for why people get bent out of shape -- Trick Attack was the last one-minute party buff in the game. Removing it completely removes a unique kind of party-specific optimisation that there is no substitute for. It makes the game more samey, both for Ninjas and people who play with Ninjas. Not to mention... this is a change to an ability which has functioned almost identically from ARR to EW. Trick Attack has always been a back positional party buff activated by Suiton. It's power and duration has been adjusted (and, I'm told, it used to not apply the vuln up if you missed the positional lol) but the core function of the ability hasn't changed. Why change it now? It wasn't broken, and didn't need fixing.

The Doton changes were just an extra fuck-you to Ninjas, in my opinion. I'm not going to cry about it being gone, but it was such a minor little piece of optimisation to do, and barely affected anyone. I guess tanks who hate doing a fight slightly different for the first thirty seconds of a fight are winning?

[aloneatsea]

So, your concern isn't that NIN doesn't have a one-minute burst window (ie something to do outside of a two-minute burst window)—as it might appear from the first quote—but that other jobs don't have one-minute burst windows? If that's the criticism, I would argue that that is about changes to other jobs rather than NIN. Having Trick Attack and Mug as one- and two-minute debuffs means that that the raid debuff lines up with the two-minute raid bursts and the Trick Attack debuff lines up with the one-minute NIN bursts.

I re-read this, and wanted to elaborate on the point that's being missed here.


The whole concept of a 'party buff' creates interplay between different classes. A selfish class can pool resources in order to deliberately spend them during buff windows to maximise damage output. In Shadowbringers, we had a variety of buffs provided by different classes on 90s, 1min, 2min, 3min etc timers. While this meant that certain combinations of classes were much stronger than other combinations, it meant that oftentimes no two parties were the same, and how you played your class might differ from party to party, based on your composition. The opportunity for party-specific optimisation was there, increasing replayability.

In Endwalker, before 6.1, the odd-buff timers were removed, and every major party buff with the exception of Trick Attack was moved to the two-minute mark. While this heavily streamlines things and creates strong alignment between burst, reducing jank in classes that struggle to be compatible, it also greatly reduces that party-specific complexity I mentioned before. This was somewhat palatable given that we still had Trick Attack, which provided a means for classes with excess resources to optimise and spend around. Now, I don't play Reaper at a high level; this is information I gleaned from speaking with a friend I used to raid with -- but Reaper will get about three Enshroud windows per 2 minute window. Two of these can fit in your standard two-minute party buff, but the third one cannot. The existence of Trick Attack as a one-minute party buff meant that Reapers playing in a party with a Ninja are incentivised to use their excess Enshroud window during Trick.


Removing Trick Attack as a one-minute party buff removes this interplay, and removes any drive or direction for spending this excess Enshroud window. It literally doesn't matter anymore when that Reaper uses their third Enshroud, because there's nothing to gain ion any situation.

This is what we mean when we say that other classes are losing out on being able to play around the one-minute window. It's not that other classes have suddenly stopped having one-minute burst -- it's that there's no longer a reason for anyone to have one-mintue burst. It doesn't matter anymore, when it used to matter. There used to be more complexity.

We're upset because that little bit of complexity has been taken away from us, and I really do feel that high-end gameplay suffers for it.