Live Letter XVI Discussion Thread

[MartaDemireux]

its lots of time doing nothing but handsigns. we still dont know how it works :/

The video clearly shows spells that take 1 mudra, 2 mudras and 3 mudras. The spell made with 3 mudras only took about 3 seconds in total. Primary spells (Fire, Stone, Ruin, Cure) all have about that cast time so I'm guessing that's what they were balanced against.

As a Ninjutsu spell can be cast with only 1 mudra and there are 4 (possibly 5) mudras shown I'm guessing 4 of the 5 (or maybe all 5) job abilities learned will be mudras. The first Ninja quest you do could let you cast beginner's Ninjutsu with just one mudra. The next quest could give you a mudra so now you have 4 potential combinations for intermediate spells. Each quest you do could teach a new mudra leading up to bigger and flashier spells cast when you combine certain ones together. Of course some combinations will fail to produce a spell as well. Yoshi did say that mudras will be both attack spells and support spells. For instance the one that creates a swirling quicksand may root enemies in place or be similar to Sacred Soil.

From the video we're shown 4 mudra. I'll just call these (in order of appearance) 1, 2, 3, 4.

1: Giant exploding shurikan thrown.
2+3: Bolt of lightning.
Unknown combination: Ice.
2+2: Fire.
Uknown combination: Earth swirl.
1+4+2: Tornado thing.
2+2+2: Water spout.

Edit: I'm having trouble deciphering the kanji used in the spells. They appear to be highly stylized kanji, some looking more like Mongolian or Tibetan than Japanese. Spell 2 for instance looks like a highly stylized version of 巾 meaning "Width" or sometimes "Breadth" and sort of makes sense in the spell lines. 3 巾's lead to a giant water spout. 1 巾 at the end of a string made a tornado. 2 巾's made a swirling fire. The lightning bolt kind of throws me off with its inclusion of 巾 but it may make sense if I could decipher the "3" mudra.

Edit2: 3 could be a stylized version of 老 meaning "old/aged." Being used in a lightning spell with Ramuh being an old man perhaps makes sense?

Edit3: 1 looks like it could possibly be a stylized version of 决 meaning "decisive."

Edit4: 4 is really hard to tell. So far it looks like it could be a stylized version of 赳 which I'm unsure of a Japanese meaning for. It's also a Han character meaning "grand/valiant" which does make a bit of sense for a tornado. Still looking into this one.

[Warlyx]

The video clearly shows spells that take 1 mudra, 2 mudras and 3 mudras. The spell made with 3 mudras only took about 3 seconds in total. Primary spells (Fire, Stone, Ruin, Cure) all have about that cast time so I'm guessing that's what they were balanced against.

yeah that looks about right , kinda like the Warden system in Lotro .

the huge shuriken maybe is the basic skill ?

if u use the skill w/o mudras u toss a shurikeen for X dmg

use mudras in order to combine them now use surikeen skill and u throw a skill instead of the basic shuriken , the skill updates when u use mudras. (5 skills for ninja only so with 1 skill u can cast a combination of mudras :P)

the issue is that having to use 3 skills in order to cast a ninjustu , looks cool but will get tiresome after 1 month....macros could help i guess

[Xairos]

Snip

Thanks for that insight! As opposed to the lulwut responses, I was just curious on how much time would be used combining mudras in the heat of battle as opposed to having to move and whether or not it could get to the higher damaging combos without dropping the chain. One of my classes is MNK and my GL stack gets dropped all the time and as a result i was curious. I imagine this to be a job that operates between BLM, MNK and something else.

[MartaDemireux]

Thanks for that insight!

Very welcome! I enjoy deciphering things haha. All too often Kanji are stylized which make them really hard to see. An example would be their town flags (really cool to see in my opinion): http://pinktentacle.com/2010/04/50-j...os-with-kanji/

If I can decipher the other two I'll edit that previous post!

I see it playing very similar to a MNK and melee SMN. Melee SMN's place DoT's and then use Ruin II so their auto-attack damage can be added in. MNK as you know use combos. DoT's (specifically poisons) have been said to be the focus of Rogue DPS. I'm guessing that will be their primary source of damage so DPS doesn't drop while combining mudras.