The Ninja Superthread

[NovaLevossida]

I hope thats really true, Im on my way there.
Still quite the underwhelming effect, would've been more fun if it lasted a few seconds... tho a bit OP.

It's kind of nice. When buffs are up and trick attack is applied, at level 58 I've seen Aeolian Edge hit for 1400 and then the damage comes right after it mirrored. So I'd see like...

1400
1400

Which is kind of nice all things considered.

[NovaLevossida]

As a quick question, is Shadewalker something I cast on the active tank? Like does it take 80% of the enmity I, myself, generate and transfer that to the target I selected? I thought it was just Quelling Strikes for the person I targeted, but I saw that it might work as something to move my own enmity generation onto the tank. So which is correct? Shadewalker onto the tank at the beginning of the fight when I go to burst at the start or Shadewalker a healer so that 80% of the enmity he generates goes to a doppelganger that disappears in 15 seconds?

Couldn't really tell from the tooltip wording which way it actually worked.

[Alahra]

Shadewalker gives the enmity you generate to the person you target, yes.

Smoke Screen, on the other hand, lowers the target's enmity (in an all at once drop like Shroud of Saints, as far as I can tell).

[NovaLevossida]

Great, thanks. That tooltip made me think it did something entirely else.

[softestPAWSintheEAST]

Seems pretty smooth. You managed to be where you needed to be when debuffs needed to be reapplied. I'm not sure about the Armor Crush areas (as I'm still experimenting myself), but in any case you kept all debuffs up or immediately reapplied within a GCD of falling off (which is great). Why did you hold your TA so long during the second Suiton? I saw that you waited until after your DE application to use it. If you were waiting so SF got the TA buff, I think you were within the GCDs to make SF just at the end of the TA which would have been applied to the GS and DE. Other than that, I thought it looked very good for so early into the expansions life! ^_^

thanks! and i held the TA for a bit so that it could have the blood for blood buff. depending on my mudra delays and stuff, i might be maybe 1 or 2 gcds off but that's my reasoning anyways.

yeah, i'm not sure when to armor crush =( it just makes sense to armor crush <40s

Shadewalker gives the enmity you generate to the person you target, yes.

Smoke Screen, on the other hand, lowers the target's enmity (in an all at once drop like Shroud of Saints, as far as I can tell).

is it like shroud? i thought it was more like quelling strikes. i'll have to check again after the maintenance

[Alahra]

So I'm 59, and I'll probably be level 60 tomorrow. Overall I'm relatively disappointed in the new skills we got as a whole. Of the four I've played with, here are my thoughts:

• Smoke Screen: This would be a nicer ability if we could target ourselves with it. As is, it does little to adjust our playstyle and the enmity drop itself doesn't seem to be all that high. It's capped at some number, as there have been times I've not been able to get aggro from a healer after using it on them. All in all, especially with the addition of Shadewalker, this just feels like very marginal utility.
• Armor Crush: Being able to extend Huton really increases our flexibility, and as should be expected, this is the best of our new additions. I don't really have anything negative to say about this, though I wish they had added it to the end of Shadow Fang instead of Gust Slash. At times it feels a little awkward needing to juggle three combos on Gust Slash. This is our only exciting ability, easily.
• Shadewalker: This has proven fairly useful in Duty Finder so far, since you never know how your gear will compare to your tank's. However, in more controlled settings (with friends and/or an Alexander static), I don't see this being very useful in the long term unless they do some weird things with fight mechanics.
• Duality: While dropping 2k+ damage with one Aeolian Edge is fairly nice, the cooldown on this feels rather long. It feels as though this could use an extra something.

I've not used Dream Within a Dream yet, though as another oGCD damage filler, it's not really anything to write home about. We got one too many abilities to manipulate enmity, and if one of those had been swapped for a new Weaponskill or perhaps something defensive even, I feel like there would be more to be excited about.

That being said, I'm still having a blast. The addition of positionals is taking some time to get used to, but in general we can still largely sit on the rear as we used to, since we'll only need to hit Armor Crush on longer fights (I don't tend to hit it until I have less than 15 seconds on Huton if I can help it, otherwise trying to get Aeolian Edges in). Damage still feels high at least from relative experiences in Duty Finder, so we should still be desirable in that regard.

[Alahra]

is it like shroud? i thought it was more like quelling strikes. i'll have to check again after the maintenance

As far as I've been able to tell, yes. It doesn't provide them with a buff the way Quelling Strikes does, so it seems to be an instant one-time effect. It doesn't seem to be as powerful as Shroud, though.

[Houston009]

Smoke Screen is a 20s buff on target. (seems to be Quelling Strikes)

[Pluvia]

As far as I've been able to tell, yes. It doesn't provide them with a buff the way Quelling Strikes does, so it seems to be an instant one-time effect. It doesn't seem to be as powerful as Shroud, though.

IIRC it puts a buff on them I'll double check as soon as the servers come up and confirm

[softestPAWSintheEAST]

As far as I've been able to tell, yes. It doesn't provide them with a buff the way Quelling Strikes does, so it seems to be an instant one-time effect. It doesn't seem to be as powerful as Shroud, though.

hmm.. because when you smokescreen, they have the buff on them for 20 seconds iirc. it wouldn't make sense for a instant-one time effect to have a duration