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

[butchersblock]

Basically what aloneatsea detailed here. Some people act like it's nothing but for high end raiders this was a big part of raiding. This isn't some "sky is falling" overreaction, the high end gameplay significantly suffers because of the tha direction

[Vatom]

I just miss dancing edge and shadow fang animations
aeolian edge bores me and armor crush feels like its a break in momentum (in a immersion look to me)

[Quor]

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.

Yes, I'm aware. By "error" I mean they got an A = B situation instead of A = A. Armor Crush would make total sense as the slashing debuff that NIN once had, while Aeolian Edge would make total sense, being a wind-inspired name, as the Huton extender. Somehow, at some point in time during localization and translating, the wires got crossed and we got what we have now, and SE left it be.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes, I'm aware. By "error" I mean they got an A = B situation instead of A = A. Armor Crush would make total sense as the slashing debuff that NIN once had, while Aeolian Edge would make total sense, being a wind-inspired name, as the Huton extender. Somehow, at some point in time during localization and translating, the wires got crossed and we got what we have now, and SE left it be.

Armor Crush... doesn't slash, though. By appearance, it makes a tiny, pierceable hole in enemy defenses, nothing exploitable by slashing attacks. It was also added well after Dancing Edge (a skill that did, by appearance, seem to cut large swaths into the enemy with forceful strikes --an uppercut before two downward slices, each with bodyweight behind them) had already taken the Slashing niche, and was a better fit for it in terms of animation. Even Shadowfang's animation arguably fit better as a means of applying a Slashing Resistance Down debuff.

But yes, if they had already known they wanted a Huton-extender, then starting with Dancing Edge as the direct damage nuke, supplying Armor Crush as the vuln debuff, and the attaching Huton-extension to Aeolian Edge would have made a bit more sense.



That said, the simplest fact of the matter is that, whether the animation was left over from 2.4 or not, they introduced an animation out of place for both its effects and its surrounding motifs. It looks more Rogue than NIN, and comparatively quite underwhelming. That's not to say you can't have a piercing strike --say, Kamaitachinotsuki or Wind Spine-- but it should fit the motifs of the other animations, especially Gust Blade before it. Yet, as noted above:

armor crush feels like it's a break in momentum (in a immersion look to me)

[aloneatsea]

Yes, I'm aware. By "error" I mean they got an A = B situation instead of A = A. Armor Crush would make total sense as the slashing debuff that NIN once had, while Aeolian Edge would make total sense, being a wind-inspired name, as the Huton extender. Somehow, at some point in time during localization and translating, the wires got crossed and we got what we have now, and SE left it be.

I can't tell if I'm missing something, or...


Shurrikhan mentions that Trick Attack's japanese name translates as Sneak Attack or Trick Attack, and that Armor Crush's japanese name also translates to a similar meaning as the english name. How is this an A = B situation? It seems quite A = A to me. Your gripe is with the naming of the ability in general, not the localisation.



That said, I largely agree with the sentiment that Armour Crush feels like an odd ability choice with which to refresh Huton. Aeolian Edge does seem like a much better choice. That said, I do love Armor Crush's animation, and would hate to see it go like other GCDs (rip Shadowfang...).

I did find the suggestion of Huton being refreshed by Aeolian Edge to be quite interesting. SE seems dead-set on paring down buttons to make way for new ones, and one of the bigger suggestions for this is to make 1-2-3 combos a single button ala PVP. This doesn't work for jobs with branching combinations like Ninja -- but if we removed Armour Crush, this becomes an option.

I wonder what a Ninja with an Aeolian Edge that refreshed Huton by 10s, and no Armour Crush would look like? It takes ~6 1/2 seconds to cycle your 1-2-3 combo if Huton is active, meaning you'd gain 3 1/2 seconds of Huton each 1-2-3 cycle. Assuming (generously) that you're cycling your GCDs for 45s, and then bursting (i.e. not refreshing Huton) for 15s, you would gain ~24.5 seconds of Huton a minute, and lose ~15s of Huton a minute by bursting. In two-minute windows this would be much more severe, as your burst lasts longer which means you're spending less time refreshing Huton.

I don't know if this would be interesting, but it might actually put pressure on managing Huton and minimising downtime. If you disconnect for more than ~9s a minute, you run the risk of Huton dropping entirely.

I don't think I recommend as an option, but it's interesting to think about. I like the idea of Huton being a little more pressured to manage -- or at least a little more flexible. Bring back the 70s Huton cap, please...

[butchersblock]

Speaking of animations, if there's anything I miss, it's Assassinate.

[Quor]

Armor Crush animation.

I mean, if you really want to split hairs, sure. There are more than a handful of animations in this game that don't make "sense" but you can easily argue that shattering armor with a concentrated strike ("puncturing it") would render a target vulnerable to all kinds of physical trauma, not simply slashing damage. More to the point though I think, regardless of animation, it came down to a simple balancing act; you had three melee dps each with their own debuff. MNK debuffed blunt, DRG debuffed piercing and NIN ultimately debuffed slashing. Each melee dps had a debuff that enhanced their own damage and by virtue of being a slashing-based dps, NIN was going to get a slashing debuff and animations be damned.

TA/SA translation.

Not sure where that's coming from. I was referring specifically to Armor Crush and Aeolian edge having possibly been switched at some point in time during development such that the two just don't make all that much sense, thematically. That's all I was referring to.

To be clear, I only relayed this anecdote because it was an interesting explanation of something I had seen people bring up in response to the mild awkwardness of "Armor Crush" being the thing that extends Huton duration. That's it. It's just a story. You disagree, that's fine, I'm just the messenger here.

[aloneatsea]

Speaking of animations, if there's anything I miss, it's Assassinate.

Well, it's technically still there, if you head back to do some ARR synced content...


I do miss it in endgae, though. I loved watching my character vanish to jump on the head of the huge boss in the first Nier raid... it was so silly, yet kinda cool at the same time. Don't miss the animation lock, though.