The Ninja Superthread

[Arkenne]

What I can tell about the skills up to lvl 54 is:

Smoke Bomb: its quite underwhelming at first glance, but its surprisingly handy.
The skill itself is a Queling Strikes on a party member, not yourself.
It does NOT affect your party member's current aggro pool, but it reduces conciderably the aggro generated by said party member in the duration of the skill.

If your party member had 100 aggro points on an oponent, and did a 1000 aggro points worth of skills under its 20 seconds of effect, the skill should have at least halved that to 500 and they would end up with 600 points. The original 100 are not affected.

This skill proves its worth in duns when there are waves of enemies which are often in reach of the ranged players or catch sight of the healer much faster than the tank. Allowing the Tank to stabilize aggro in an easier manner and not waste sources on aggro generating skills alone.


Armor Crush: tho at first I believed this skill would have been better suited after Shadow Fang, having it branch after Gust Slash made it for a subtle and gentle change in the rotation rather than a complete GCD addition. Which would have on the long (or short) term ended up making the fall of Shadow Fang, Mutilate or Dancing Edge more often than one would desire to.

Armor Crush adds but another layer of priorities in the already priority ridden class of NIN. Should be used instead of Aeolian Edge at a chance that occurs once in the rotation every 18 seconds.
As in, if the rotation was MU > SF > DE > AE. At a point it would become MU > SF > DE > AC.
Keeping an eye on the Huton timer and dividing it in multiples of 18 should ease this up. You will need a minimal of 6 seconds for its use, but 'tis needless to say that if you excecute it at any moment that was not originally designed for AE, will bring about the fall of either of the buffs or debuffs.

There is also no need to use it before the 40 seconds timer, and actually, doing the rotation cycle as AE, AE, AE, AC,(AE, AC, AC, AE, AE, AC) does work just fine.


I have some theories about the other skills, but for now I will leave it here (or it will become an excesively long post)

[Alahra]

Are you encountering any events like that when refreshing at such a low duration?

I do occasionally if I'm not keeping careful track of things, yeah. I'm still trying to figure out if it's best to wait and try to cram everything in at the end or to use Armor Crush earlier, and keep Huton's timer around the 1 minute mark as much as possible.

[AnMex]

What are everyone's thoughts on this:
New Possible Opener:

Blood for Blood >Spinning Edge+Internal Release >Gust Slash+Pot > Dancing Edge > Suiton > Spinning Edge > Kassatsu+Trick > Shadow Fang + Fuma/Raiton > Mutilate+Mug+Jug> Spinning Edge + Dream Within a Dream> Gust Slash + Duality > Aeolian Edge

My only gripe with this rotation is (Mutilate+Mug+Jug), because if you have bad latency it'll cut into the next GCD and your AE wont fall in the TA window. I'm only at lvl59 right now so I cant test since I dont have DWOD but just wanted to get thoughts on this.

Also, when would be the best time to use armor crush? at 17-18 sec before huton runs out just like how we reset it before? or when there are 8sec left in Huton?

[Aiurily]

that's basically the same 2.x opener, except with combining oGCDs to make room for DWAD and duality. i think it's fine yeah, dont think theres any other realistic way to fit those two skills in otherwise. you'll likely have to use fuma probably since you'll clip slightly with jug+mug

you should definitely do trick>kassatsu though, because if you weaponskill right after trick attack, it doesn't actually take effect (unless this was fixed).

[Arkenne]

Blood for Blood >Spinning Edge+Internal Release >Gust Slash+Pot > Dancing Edge > Suiton > Spinning Edge > Kassatsu+Trick > Shadow Fang + Fuma/Raiton > Mutilate+Mug+Jug> Spinning Edge + Dream Within a Dream> Gust Slash + Duality > Aeolian Edge

I've only got as far as lvl 56 so Im also in the dark about Dream.
But supposing it doesnt have an animation lock that wont let you do anything else...

As I see it, neither of your buffs will reach Aeolian Edge. 'Tis true that Mug and Jug doesn't have much of an animation lock so they can go pretty quickly, but they are 140 and 80 potency respectively, even if you add them up they wont get as much of a bonus as an unbuffed Aeolian Edge...
I think we should give the priority order of Ninjutsu > Dream > Mug > Jugulate and Duality always before Aeolian.

[Ephier]

that's basically the same 2.x opener, except with combining oGCDs to make room for DWAD and duality. i think it's fine yeah, dont think theres any other realistic way to fit those two skills in otherwise. you'll likely have to use

you should definitely do trick>kassatsu though, because if you weaponskill right after trick attack, it doesn't actually take effect (unless this was fixed).

Correct. Everything takes a moment to "apply" on a target, this can be seen with SMNs fester not accounting for bio if you smack it too quickly.

[Allyrion]

I've only got as far as lvl 56 so Im also in the dark about Dream.
But supposing it doesnt have an animation lock that wont let you do anything else...

As I see it, neither of your buffs will reach Aeolian Edge. 'Tis true that Mug and Jug doesn't have much of an animation lock so they can go pretty quickly, but they are 140 and 80 potency respectively, even if you add them up they wont get as much of a bonus as an unbuffed Aeolian Edge...
I think we should give the priority order of Ninjutsu > Dream > Mug > Jugulate and Duality always before Aeolian.

I agree DwD should be higher priority than Mug and Jugulate.
Also, I think BfB should start after Spinning Edge, and IR after Gust Slash so they'll up for the full opener, but not delayed further than that.

Duality always on Aeolian sounds great in theory, but if you're keeping up Dancing Edge yourself then you delay it too much in my opinion.
There have been a good few times it's just off cooldown but I need to do a full Dancing Edge combo and refresh the dots before I can do AE (which is at the end of its own combo).

If you can sync Duality with AE reasonably, that's great but if if you're gonna have to hold the cooldown for 10s+, I doubt it's a dps increase."
Maybe when pandabearcat finishes that simulator it'll be clearer what the most optimized will be though.

[Arkenne]

Duality conditions and priority relations between DE and AE

You've presented a good point. 'Tis true I commented Duality being exclusively reserved for AE, but till now for some reason didn't bother about mathing the rotation 90 seconds later to see how available it might be to AE. Specially since by then there is a lot of things happening that might imply the lose of your combo by disconects at some point.

Giving it a priority of AE > AC > DE depending the situation might be an answer closer to reality. Altho exclusively speaking of the opener... yep, AE.

[Dante_V]

I have been doing alternating from the opener in full rotations (DE, SF, MU, AE/AC)

AE > AC > AE > AC > AE > AC > AC
The effect is diminishing over time however so there comes a point where you have to do two rotations that end with AC. But I'm trying to line up the intervals so that I can some continuity between my damage cool downs and aeolian. Ie set it up so that I'm on an aeolian rotation when damage buffs are up for it.

For some reason I thought the armor crush clipped the time away if you reapplied but it doesn't so that is lovely.

[Allyrion]

After playing around at 60, I'm really happy with the changes.
Though I called the Enmity abilities redundant, I've actually grown to be glad to have both.

Ironically, compared to monks, though it seemed like we weren't getting much before, our rotation developed a lot more with Armor Crush.
It's a new rotation, and it's even more desynced than it was before.
But that's a good thing. It's very active and takes a lot more adaptation, but it's engaging and fun.

It's a bit funny to see so many other classes complaining about the changes, while NIN got away with what was thought to be underwhelming changes and nerfs.
Well, maybe some still feel so but I think we got very positive changes.

My only qualm might be that though there is a place for AE in rotation still, it's completely dropped if you have to face the target.
I know that usually doesn't happen, only solo-ing and stuff before they invented mobs that activate positionals from all sides.
Still, I'd think it would be better if Dancing Edge got the back positional and AE would more free.

I think it would feel a lot better since it's used less now, the times it does get used it should feel less restricted, just raw damage.
And Dancing Edge is always going to be used for its debuff, but if Aeolian Edge can't perform the damage its meant to then it's worthless.
Again, yea that's still doesn't apply to most scenarios but I think design wise it'd be better that way.


On Duality and Dream Within a Dream:

Well, I really thought Duality would be for a duration. Guess I'll eat my words now.
It's too bad but since it does get the combo potency of the skill, it's pretty awesome.

DWD is awesome.
300 off-gcd potency, pretty sure that's the strongest single target oGCD in the game.
The animation is lovely and over the top.
Too bad I hardly ever see the full thing. That really bugs me actually.
It doesn't feel like an animation that's made to be clipped, but it almost always is.


Speaking of single target, we seem to be quite strong there.
Not speaking of single target, I actually feel like we fell off in AoE.
I actually always liked our AoE and it was pretty strong if you did it right.
We didn't lose that, but everyone else gained much more AoE potential.
Not really a complaint but I'm pretty sure we went from the upper half (at least) to likely the last, just because nothing we gained affects our AoE.

Lastly, I wish Shade Shift worked on magic too.
But overall, I'm really happy playing NIN right now. The new rotation is a lot of fun.

Wonder if we should remake this thread for HW.