Objective comparison of Mnk and Nin difficulty to play ?

[DenebPunkin]

Hey there. I am interested in a discussion to gather some objective and argumented PoV onto the difficulty of playing Mnk or Nin. I am leaving Drg out of it as they are getting changed quite a bit very soon, and that Mnk and Nin are currently fighting for the spotlight.


Some people have argued that nin dmg needs to be nerfed because their damage is "too easily accessible". I do not have a mnk leveled up (disclaimer), but i do main ninja, and i did invest some time to understand the rotation of mnks well enough.

I am quite unconvinced by those claims, and while i don't think nin is harder to play than mnks, i do not think there is a huge difference in difficulty between the two, and certainly none that warrants a nerf when nin is already the one with lesser damage and utility (although very slightly on both accounts).

Mnks need to maintain a 30 sec Dot (like nin), a 18 sec dot (like nin), a 15 sec damage increase buff (like nin but nin can slack on that if a warrior do it for them, and it's actually 20 sec long), and dragon kick. GL will be kept up as long as you continue hitting the boss in a non-stupid way. On top of that, they need to hit positionnal attacks to get the most out of their attacks, although missing one here and there won't make or break their dps, since they get all the other benefits anyway.

Ninja, on top of the listed things, will need to use goad effectively (can't wait for someone to call for it as it is a waste, for best use you need to pretty much keep it on CD and organize with your party for who gets it when), and use jutsus in a correct way. Most people think this is simple, but there is quite a lot of thought involved in it: you do not want to make huton drop, and it last 70 seconds. There are 20 seconds of recast for justus, starting at the execution, and you need some time to input all mudras. Realistically you have at most 5 seconds of margin to split in your cycle of 3 jutsu (huton, suiton, raiton) if you want to prevent the drop of huton; if you have kassatsu, you have about zero margin and need to hit all your jutsu instantly. You need to input them without double tapping (or you can bunny, and you need to watch for any delay in the execution), and need to know beforehand which of the 3 you need to use. Trick attack is also better saved for the next jutsu if the boss will become untargettable in the next 10 seconds, so you can not just blindly go huton -> suiton -> raiton, sometimes you will switch to huton -> raiton -> suiton and back again. All this is quite an involved thought process and is far from trivial -- it is honestly harder to keep track of than simply "blue dot about to fall off, time to shadow fang", which you can do "on the fly": i hit the first part of the combo, and check for what i need to continue with during the off GCD. I can't do that with my jutsus -- if i do not check out some seconds before my jutsu is ready i will likely either delay it a bit too much or just use the wrong one.


When all is said and done, i feel like the jutsu complexity does make up for the positionals and then some, and that both jobs feel equally complex to play out. However, when reading stuff on the forum or reddit, it seems quite a large part of the playerbase feel like ninja is braindead and mnk is rocket science. What's the take of people here ? Care to elaborate on the subject a bit ?

WUT.

That 10% intelligence decrease lowers the damage of any magic attacks that the debuffed target uses. And any Monk with even a passing knowledge of their class will have it up 100% of the time, whereas the 10% increase to damage taken by the target is for 10s and on a 60s cooldown.

Ahhhhh... it lowers the enemies Intel thereby reducing THEIR magic attacks. Ohhhh... I always assumed it meant a 10% damage increase for castors only... hahaha. Thanks for the clarification ^_^. Now I know why my DRG sometimes lives.. and sometimes dies from some of them attacks T_T...

[Leonus]

You compared mudra's to positioning for example. Mudra's are in the players hands where a position depends on the boss, tank, task you could have etc. Not a good comparison imho.

Positioning is mostly in the players hands, there are times or instances where it might not always be but it majority of the time is. Mudras are usually in the players hands, however, missing/Flubbing a mudra cast is more costly than missing your positional on drg (though most of the time this happens it isn't the drgs fault), which in turn means it's more costly than mnk missing a positional imo. It's just when jutsus are botched, unless there was lag, the player can't be mad at anyone but themselves.

I think it's kind of balanced out but majority of people seem to not think so.

Mudra combos vs Positional requirements.

[Tsuya]

Iv been playing MNK since Beta, beat T1 to T9 on it and all primals acessble, switched to NIN after patch and 4 days after i went to do some T6-9 to practice, then i beat T10-11 on NIN, it took some practice but now i feel fairly at ease with NIN so i finally can compare bouth.

MNK only issue is knowing fight good enough to know how to keep your stacks on, and ofcorst posicional attacks but luckily he wont drop its combo when hitting wrong side.

On NIN on the other side u have to deal with two separate cooldown timers (mudra + buffs/dots) constantly muving against each other (combat disengages, mudra lag) so i have to say, at least for me NIN is much more heavy managment than MNK and i have to try REALLY hard and dont miss single mudra to have comparable DPS to my MNK wich is now 4 ilvls lower.

I also did T10-11 on MNK and it felt much easier to get to DPS that im happy with.

[PROBOUND]

Ninja Nerf results are IN! All in all, pretty minor. Say goodbye to 2k Raitons. AOE Katon's will also probably suffer somewhat. Otherwise this seems to be at most a 2% DPS loss.

souce
It is Yoshi P's reply to a post on the Japanese forum.
In short
Aeolian Edge: 50TP -> 60 TP
Shadow Fang: 60 TP -> 70 TP
Kiss of the Wasp: increase damage -> increase physical damage
Kiss of the Viper: increase damage -> increase physical damage

[Edit] There seems to be a mixup with Aeolian and Shadow people saying they should be swapped out (Aeolian 70)

[Arkenne]

Well, about the TP, its understandable...
I mean, I've been stuck at dummies some times for 10~15 mins nonstop and even forget my skills use TP :/
Then use Invigorate once every 2nd fullmoon and overtop the TP again :v
The Mudra stops ironically slow you so much you recover 1 or 2 ticks of TP before resuming consumption, and the skills themselves aren't as costly... specially since Nin can't use Fracture.

Ninjas can actually Sprint in battle...

[whiskeybravo]

Well, about the TP, its understandable...
I mean, I've been stuck at dummies some times for 10~15 mins nonstop and even forget my skills use TP :/
Then use Invigorate once every 2nd fullmoon and overtop the TP again :v
The Mudra stops ironically slow you so much you recover 1 or 2 ticks of TP before resuming consumption, and the skills themselves aren't as costly... specially since Nin can't use Fracture.

Ninjas can actually Sprint in battle...

I have TP problems on NIN but it's probably due to too much sksp (Bard hand-me-downs result in too much sksp lol)


Anyways, I thought for sure they would adjust the TP or potency on Shadow Fang. 440 potency DoT for 60 TP? Most of the other dots are 80 tp for less potency, hell Phlebotomize is 90 tp for only 320 potency. Broken.

[Taliss]

Kiss of the Wasp: increase damage -> increase physical damage
Kiss of the Viper: increase damage -> increase physical damage

Kinda sad that they are moving poisons back to strictly blade damage, but its understandable.

[Arkenne]

I have TP problems on NIN but it's probably due to too much sksp (Bard hand-me-downs result in too much sksp lol)


Anyways, I thought for sure they would adjust the TP or potency on Shadow Fang. 440 potency DoT for 60 TP? Most of the other dots are 80 tp for less potency, hell Phlebotomize is 90 tp for only 320 potency. Broken.

I just threw some silly numbers, but its true that Ninja skills are pretty cheap TP wise for Potency return.
¿Maybe Nin is intended to actually use Sprint as a Melee DPS? I don't see the utility in that but at least its fun when killing small things in field maps.

[alsims2007]

So if poisons are only affecting physical can death blossom potency get an increase? I feel losing that 20% on ninjutsu will really hurt ninja aoe

[Leonus]

So if poisons are only affecting physical can death blossom potency get an increase? I feel losing that 20% on ninjutsu will really hurt ninja aoe

Death blossom is physical, so it will still get the 20% damage boost.