Healing ninja woes.....GO!

[Vid]

Having gotten my NIN to 50 I can honestly say most will go in guns blazing into the first pull. As any bard or black mage can tell you, this is idiotic and you will end up pulling hate because the tank has probably only hit the poor thing all of once. Initial NIN burst damage with cooldowns up, trick/sneak attack and their basic combo can do some nasty damage. At the same time it almost always mean they will pull aggro.

It's more or less the player though, they don't wait for the initial combo from the tank before they start attacking (other classes are known for this as well though). Since NIN is the new class, everyone is playing it, so you'll see a fair amount who could care less about aggro mechanics and just want to kill things as fast as possible, regardless how many times they die.

They really only have one move that would lock them in place so they couldn't dodge a Red Circle so to speak, but the cooldown is long enough that they should be able to dodge all the other things typical enemies throw out. I would chalk it up to inexperience as a melee dps more then anything. Those who weren't interested in playing a Monk or Dragoon, probably wanted to try out Ninja instead, and as is the case with most MMORPG's, melee dps get screwed heavily on most fights.

[Asheilin]

I'm leveling my nin currently, but been also helping my fiancee catch up a tank to it(stopped at 30) so been running healer. I've seen what your talking about OP, and as I ran MogHM and watched two nin drop like flies the first attempt (at least 60% of party had never done it before) it was a moment of ><


As leveling a nin, I can say there is a point for many who've never ran a melee class through content before, I'm one of them. I just commented yesterday about being afraid of Titan HM for my relic (as that thing murders me as sch/smn) I've noticed several easy mechanics/pulls etc that were more difficult because I wasn't ranged. Having just gotten my ninjutsu though, I can already tell there will be moments of attention pause at higher levels until the combos have been memorized for the murdas wanted.

I've also noticed many ROG/NIN hitting 30 on their first job; many I've seen later in towns/housing as 50s. This can cause the inexperience to skyrocket because most players expect that the content is on farm, when there are many people still trying to learn the mechanics to the bosses etc.

Just a few things I've noticed/experienced since nin came out, my lala (50brd) has actually watched NIN run into a boss while tank is casting stoneskin on himself (either healer wasn't/didnt have it available yet lol) and drop in a single hit. So, even still with everything else...there is a "unthinking" issue too.

[erkhardt]

I'm leveling my nin currently, but been also helping my fiancee catch up a tank to it(stopped at 30) so been running healer. I've seen what your talking about OP, and as I ran MogHM and watched two nin drop like flies the first attempt (at least 60% of party had never done it before) it was a moment of ><


As leveling a nin, I can say there is a point for many who've never ran a melee class through content before, I'm one of them. I just commented yesterday about being afraid of Titan HM for my relic (as that thing murders me as sch/smn) I've noticed several easy mechanics/pulls etc that were more difficult because I wasn't ranged. Having just gotten my ninjutsu though, I can already tell there will be moments of attention pause at higher levels until the combos have been memorized for the murdas wanted.

Hey hey hey,

Finally a Levi player! Add me to your friends list, I would be glad to lend a hand, WHM or MNK!

[Asheilin]

Hey hey hey,

Finally a Levi player! Add me to your friends list, I would be glad to lend a hand, WHM or MNK!

Will do when I get home from work! I was gonna wait for nin hype to die down but was just starting a new class to level and as I keep battle classes to 15 instead of 1 burned ROG up and didn't want to stop >< there goes getting brd up next lol

[Yumi_umi]

Players new the class will die every once in a while from assassinate and tunnel visioning their rotation. They have a really similar rotation to DRGs (for the most part) but have the added complication of using Mudras. When a NIN is focusing on completing Mudras and they are confident with it yet, they will tend to ignore the battle to make sure they get it off, as ninjitsu is a huge part of NIN dps.

When mudras/ ninjitsu activation lags... You know ur gonna have a bad time as nin.
"Hey yo buddy guy, what's with the bunny on ur head. Most importantly where the hell is ur mudra buffs? "
" sorry man i'm lagging "
( replenish ranks? 0/1 healer 0/1 tank)
( vote abandon? )
" you have left the dungeon "

[Jamillion]

The main issue with most ninja's survivability is overestimating our dodge ability (we get a permanent movement speed buff) and pulling too much aggro too fast (we don't have any aggro management skills, that coupled with high skill speed is bad news). As others have stated the animation lock from assassinate is also a killer for our kind, it's easy to get locked into a thought process and use it at a bad time resulting in you being locked in an AOE.

[EricCartmenez]

As others have stated the animation lock from assassinate is also a killer for our kind, it's easy to get locked into a thought process and use it at a bad time resulting in you being locked in an AOE.

Other than my own stupidity, that's the only time that I felt like there was a weakness in the class. Unlike most Ninjas, you won't see me standing at the beginning of a fight charging a mudra. I'm not even sure why most of them do that, because by the time most fight start, the timing of its use is gone and the cd period has begun. There's no right way to start every fight. If its a trash mob, I'll give the tank a second to round things up and hit it with Katon then drop DOT's and then focus on one target. I do this as a bard too. It works and I rarely pull aggro. Most of the time, by the time I get back to target one, it's near dead or I can drop another Katon and do a few basic attacks to finish things up. If it's a focus target event where a certain target is the healer or something can't be hurt until it's dead, I give everything I have to it, no differently than anyone else in the party/raid. More often than not, I see BLM's take aggro (if they are in the party) before I do.

I think the biggest thing is that many NIN players aren't used to being in a melee position. They were healers or ranged DPS, and they haven't really dropped themselves onto the nose of a boss. Take your trials for instance. If they hadn't really paid attention to what they should dodge before, they might not be ready to get out of the way when the time comes. Aside from Assassinate, there's really no reason for a NIN not to be quick on his or her toes. I know that my first time in ST as a NIN was an eye opener when attacking Schylla. I couldn't believe the amount of AOE in the center of that room! After a couple of OW moments, I got my crap together, and I've been commended several times as a result. I actually had someone type "You're an excellent Ninja, you know exactly when to stun" when taking out Tailspin in Sastasha hard. Like many of you might say, "Yeah, that's what anyone with stun is supposed to do", but I'm guessing they had seen too many misses or lacks of attempts in the past. The idea there is to wait for one or two attempts so that the scorpion is not resistant when things get tough on the healer toward the end.

Let's face it, I've seen many melee DPS go down as a result of not getting out of the way. That's why most people start as a tank if they want melee or go ranged.

[erkhardt]

I actually had someone type "You're an excellent Ninja, you know exactly when to stun" when taking out Tailspin in Sastasha hard. Like many of you might say, "Yeah, that's what anyone with stun is supposed to do", but I'm guessing they had seen too many misses or lacks of attempts in the past.
Let's face it, I've seen many melee DPS go down as a result of not getting out of the way. That's why most people start as a tank if they want melee or go ranged.

Haha, I hear you. I am very quick to commend a NIN that never dies in runs that I heal, I understand that everyone will PROBABLY get hit with something, but if you don't drop before I need to scramble to keep one alive, I am impressed! The class is new and people are playing them that are not used to melee type classes. This is probably the closest statement that I feel is most true! When the ninja hype dies down a bit, I'll give it a go myself. Mained a MNK so I think I'll be good to go.

[Airget]

Mudra lag can be a killer for NIN's when you are trying to aim for the right jutsu, you know you pressed it but it doesn't go off, it can throw off the flow and make them more prone to get hit.

Then also assassinate causing them to stay in place for a bit so if you use it just before an AOE odds are you are getting hit.

Other things are the eagerness to get the most out of the 10 seconds trick attack vulnerability or even being unaware as to what works and doesn't work with Perfect Dodge.

Overall it's a learning experience still, the job is new and of course players are going to die because mudras do throw in a dynamic that has not been seen in other jobs. No other job has a combo where if you don't do anything for 5 seconds you not only lose it but have to wait out the timer of 20 seconds before you can combo again, so wanting to get the jutsu done as quick as possible it crucial. The other reason is because as you perform a jutsu you can't be anything else other than mudras so during those 5 second windows all you can do is a mudra, when you're trying to run from an AOE and maximize dmg you try to cast mudra on the run and potential slip ups can happen cause you aren't use to the movement yet.

Also the way each person performs a mudra, if one uses an ctr+1 2 3, or alt+1 2 3 then it's harder for them to move their hands into being able to move their character away from combat plus they have the added disability of being unable to perform mudras on the move unless they switch to mouse to finish it or just use the mouse to perform mudras.

Personally I use mouse clicks to perform the mudras so I can move in case I need to while using a custom key ` to fire off the jutsu with ease. The only issue comes when a click doesn't register causing the flow of the jutsu to be off, sometimes casting the wrong thing and other times ruining the jutsu completely because I get to eager to go back to the attack rotation.