Changes I would like to see for ninja in Stormblood

[Balipu]

So as we all no doubt know that skills are getting a revamp. Shared skills will be role based instead of class based (sounds scary. I like classes) and ineffective or unused skills will be reassessed.
Since I've had ninja as a main since 2.4 I figured I will give my oppinion on what changed ninjas might need. And naturally you can and should do the same here.

General ideas:
- Don't overdo ability pruning!
The very reason I decided to quit wow forever was the overdone ability pruning in legion. You sometimes don't get a single new ability or talent point for 8 levels. Heavensward already moved away from class skills and traits (a very bad move in my oppinion). I like to get new tricks when I level up.

- Ninja doesn't feel more ninja enough.
The shortage of armor and weapons actaully fitting the ninja might be partially to blame, but outside of the job quests, fuma shuriken, shukuchi and suiton, ninja isn't that ninja like at all. We jump, we slash, we throw around very visible elemental spells. We need more traps or perhaps transformation. That fourth mundra could have several aplications.

- Combat isn't varied enough.
By the time I finish refreshing Shadow Fang, Dancing Edge, Mutilate and Huton (With armor crush) I pretty much have to start again from the beginning. If I don't, my dps drops. It would be nice to increase their duration to give us more time to try out the new tricks that we will hopefully get in Stormblood.

Now on to useless skills

- Throwing Dagger
This is a special case as it really IS useful for rogues considering this is their only ranged skill, but after the job change I really really really don't use it much. Most of the time the enemy is in range of Raiton anyway or closer. Far closer.

- Fuma shuriken
Another special case. It is the first ninjutsu skill we get and one of the very few that actually makes you feel like a ninja. But sadly it's not really that useful in a fight. It's longer range doesn't see much use with ninja being a melee class and all, and even Katon hits harder. For AoE damage. It is supposedly stronger than Raiton if you have Dancing Edge, a Machinist with Hypercharge a poison and bad latency, but that is a very big IF. I like the look of finishing a boss with a huge ninja star so I tend to throw one at bosses at 1% health, but that's for show. Besides it has 3 different mundra combinations. It might be better to turn those three into three diffferent kinds of shuriken with more creative effects. Mundra combinations in general are a good way to give us more skills withouth filling the action bar. Give a short range shuriken with knockback or a Mortal Kombat style kunai with a lance to draw in enemies, or a shower of smaller shuriken for AoE damage. Anything.

- Poisons
Kiss of the Viper and Serpent are very very boring. Usually I apply them at the middle of duties because I just forget about them. Or rather forget that I have to reapply them after every level synch. They give a 20% damage bonus so they can't be ignored but their interaction with other abilities is very limited and again, they disappear with each level synch. They are like bullets only worse in every regard. Using poisoned blades fits both rogues and ninjas so removing them might be bad, but they definitely need rework.

- Smoke Screen and Shadewalker
These two that we got in Heavensward are nice on paper because they are good for aggro management and even fit the job fantasy, but they just don't find much use in fights. Obviously they never come up in solo play ever and even in duties only if the tank is very bad or very dead.

- Hyoton
I literally forgot that this skill even exists. Technically it doesn't take up hotbar space, but really I have to remind myself that I have it.

[ShaolinMike]

"Combat isn't varied enough"
- You're a ninja with swords and ninjutsu. You slash things and cast ninja spells. The idea that you have to go back to applying your first DoT skill after you finish applying the last one is called a ROTATION (every job has one). Interested to know what else you're looking for.

"Poisons"
- I imagine this would be something that they would eliminate when they condense the skills.

"Smoke Screen and Shadewalker"
- I think raiders everywhere would disagree with you on this one.

"Hyoton"
- Yeahhhhh...this really serves no purpose, considering that 90% of the high level enemies are immune to bind, and those that CAN be bound immediately get freed once they're hit again.

[Balipu]

"Combat isn't varied enough"
- You're a ninja with swords and ninjutsu. You slash things and cast ninja spells. The idea that you have to go back to applying your first DoT skill after you finish applying the last one is called a ROTATION (every job has one). Interested to know what else you're looking for.

"Poisons"
- I imagine this would be something that they would eliminate when they condense the skills.

"Smoke Screen and Shadewalker"
- I think raiders everywhere would disagree with you on this one.

"Hyoton"
- Yeahhhhh...this really serves no purpose, considering that 90% of the high level enemies are immune to bind, and those that CAN be bound immediately get freed once they're hit again.

- Yes I know what a rotation is, but I'd prefer to do something creative between each "circle" I'm a sneeky assassins not a robot.

- Glad we agree.

- That might be true as I never set foot in a savage raid. Like ever. I know my limits. That being said do we need two core job skills that don't come into play unless you do savage raids and extreme trials? i'm genuinely curious by the way.

- Yeah, Hyoton is dumb.

[Cabalabob]

Smokescreen and shadewalker are great if you use them properly particularly if you run with friends and can co-ordinate. Shadewalker means your tank can spend more time out of tank stance so they deal more damage without having to worry about losing enmity. Smokescreen means you can prevent the healer or a strong dps from catching up on enmity. They're both oGCD skills so using them doesn't even take away from your dps, it's pure benefit.

Hyoton is for pvp to stop mages and ranged from running away from you.

Just because you don't do content where skills are useful doesn't make them not useful.

[Shurrikhan]

:: Have there been any hints or confirmation as to how many "new tricks" we'll be getting in Stormblood?

Random question: Have you considered doing anything with the poisons that would allow you to manipulate rotation intervals, for instance extending durations with one and shortening them with the other on special effects?

Also, would you like to see anything done with the Wind aspects of the job?

--My suggestions--

Overview

• Introduce elemental mechanics.
• Introduce three new forms of movement (blink-strikes, advancing strikes, and channeled charges).
• Improve upon target-less attacks and auto-face systems.
• Add a new bar-type tracker, cooldowns. Can be combined instead into the buff or debuff bars, or can stand on its own.
• Add two new types of cooldowns, "chargeable" and "resource" cooldowns.
• Add stance-effects for Stealth.
• Allow for channeled abilities.
• * Abilities that look like they should be cleaves are now cleaves.
• * Abilities that strike multiple times now truly do strike multiple times. (Buffs are still snapshotted on ability start, rather than per strike.)
• Introduce partial LoS breaks.
• Animation times and TP regen now scale with the player's GCD. This includes bonuses such as through Goad. Buffs which may similarly suffer from loss due to desync now provide a "remainder" amount on fade. (E.g. if a 20-second TP bonus only affects 7 ticks on a 2.5s player, despite theoretically affecting 8 ticks, it will now provide the "remainder" as it fades, reaching the 8-tick amount. A similar idea may be applied to Ninja DoTs rushed or consumed by certain Ninja abilities.)
• Pipedream: massive auto-attack animation revisions to look more natural and less idle.
• Pipedream: movement physics returned. Smoother transitions between walking and running, etc. *
• Pipedream: if ragdoll physics are added in 4.0 (cost-intensive), add Tumble, Launch, and maybe Stagger, in that order of significance. (Tumble = mitigating damage by taking increased knock-back instead; Launch = launching enemies into the air, such as with a Suiton, Fire III, Aeolian Edge, Forbidden Chakra, Inner Beast, or Full Thrust, as a type of partial CC; Stagger = dealing damage suppresses the enemy's power and/or evasion.)
• * Pipedream: AI and enmity revision. Enmity now plays into a second component, Focus, which determines how aware the enemy is of you, and generally therefore how able he is to counter, resist, or mitigate your attacks and effects.
• Pipedream: introduce the first form of player customization, Adaptation, meant to exchange through adjustments to abilities, skills, or traits mechanics players might not like within the original job build or build upon ones they especially like, where easier resultant builds can still perform at plentiful dps for all but the most cutting edge encounters.

Stealth: (Ties to the AI and enmity revision.)
The rogue/ninja may now enter stealth even when in combat if not "focused" by any enemies. Enemy "focus" requires that a certain amount of enmity against the player, and is increased based on whether the player is within its line/range of sight or other primary form of detection. Abilities like Suiton, Hyoton, and Smokescreen now allow for Stealth by being partial LoS breaks, making it much more likely that you can enter Stealth, and then keeping their focus against you low as to deal proportionately increased damage.

Sneak Attack and Trick Attack have been pruned; instead, all abilities carry bonuses for being used from Stealth. Hide itself no longer carries a movement speed debuff, but walking while Hidden proportionately decreases the effectiveness of enemy detection against you. Hide, once already Hidden, can be used to toggle between slowing and accelerating movement speed, rather than leaving Stealth, as configured from the Action & Traits > Hide > context menu.

Mudras and Ninjutsu:
It is no longer possbile to bunny. Multiple of the same mudra seal may be used for varying effects, and mudra seals are now weavable between regular rotations. Furthermore, each mudra seal provides short benefits of their own, which are then converted into the Ninjutsu's effect. Ninjutsu consumes mana proportionate to the number of seals involved, though certain seals, duplicates, etc., may have different weights. In a sense, sign order is now more important, but no new combinations have been made at this time; the last seal type is still the shaper of the Ninjutsu, while the number of prior seal types determine its form. Each seal is capable of increasing the radius or max-hit of the ability, the duration or potency of debuffs afflicted, or the personal elemental resource generated (see Elemental Undermechanics below). A triple-Jin for instance, will give three instances of Shadow generation from Fuma Shurriken, while a triple-Ten will allow it to bounce up to two times, and a triple-Chi will give it cleave and increased radius. An extra Chi Hyoton allows more enemies to be caught in the conal freeze, an extra Ten Suiton will launch an enemy further airborn while an extra Chi Suiton will create a second water fount nearby between you and (or below) another target "focusing" you (see Stealth above).

Elemental Undermechanics:
Undermechanics have been added for all elements, across all jobs. Fire, for instance, carries the caster-mechanic Ignition and the target-mechanic Meltdown. More importantly to the Ninja, Wind-aspected strikes such as Gust Slash and Aeolian Edge now build Wind effects, in addition to Huton's Wind buff, while these Wind effects have a slightly wider range of use than just the Attack Speed bonus given by Huton. Dark and Light elements have also joined the wheel; while Shadow Fang applies Dark, reducing the maximum Focus of the enemy against you and redistributing that enemity among other possible targets (including his allies if under the effects of Confuse or Berserk) and enhancing your Stealth bonuses against the affected target, Katon applies Light from the angle of origin, potentially causing reduced accuracy (partial Blind) or dazing the enemy and enhancing Dark effects on the opposite side. Ice effects like Hyoton now have a double edge; Ice may technically armor the affected enemy, decreasing damage it takes while frozen until the ice is consumed, but should that damage be "Shatter"ed (destroyed too quickly for a change from frozen/bound state to merely snared state), it will deal increased damage. Hyoton therefore can act as a LoS, a bind, or setup for a nuke window (seals proportioned to the amount of damage the Ninja predicts can be Shattered; few if personal, many if in a coordinated group). In a similar vein, Huton itself can serve as a pushback or draw-in, Katon can blind, Suiton can LoS and/or Launch enemies, Raiton can mini-stun and will deal increased damage to mechanical enemies, etc. Duplicate signs go off much quicker than others, while all sign animation locks shorten based on the number of signs used in the last 5 seconds, up to the last Ninjutsu.

Poisons:
Poisons have been revised immensely. They no longer carry a base damage increase, but now provide TP (Wasp) or MP (Viper) generation on certain abilities, while dealing additional damage over time on certain attacks as the better of physical or bleed damage as Wasp or the better of physical or magic damage as Viper. Wasp retains its stun utility, while Viper retains its silence. Both affect enmity in certain ways (TBD), allowing for greater mob manipulation. Wasp additionally heals the Ninja slightly on critical strikes and stuns (including mini-stuns, such as by paralysis), while Viper heals more gradually from all damage you deal to the enemy, increasing your health as the enemy's is constricted away. Stance-dancing is more frequent in optimal play, but because "optimal play" is quite varied, it far from required except as necessary to maintain TP and MP.

Throwing Daggers:
In an attempt to make throwing daggers a more usable and attractive part of the Rogue/Ninja arsenal, despite increased Ninja mobility that would otherwise further prefer to skip Throwing Daggers in order to more quickly return to melee rotations, two parts have been added/adjusted: (1) Throwing Daggers now benefits from certain procs triggered by melee attacks, and (2) Throwing Daggers itself has been modified into an alternate-GCD channel (similar to Empyreal Arrow, but dealing up to half its damage immediately, and the rest over the remaining GCD, which can be cut short to return more quickly to regular rotation), making it easily interrupted for the sake of rotational uptime. Throwing Daggers now tosses *up to* 3 daggers immediately and then an additional dagger every .5 seconds (GCD-scaled), for 20 TP and 30 potency each, to a maximum of 6 daggers (120 TP, 180 potency).

Heavensward Skills:
Smoke Screen and Shadewalker have been massively revised. Smoke Screen now provides a partial LoS over the affected area, reducing enmity and enmity generation of allies within while reducing accuracy of attacks made from and into the affected area. It can be used as a means of preparing a melee group, etc., for bonus damage, as defensive utility, or a even a way to draw ranged attackers closer to compensate for their lost accuracy.

Shadewalker now produces a Shade, or a shadowy doppleganger of yourself, on the target ally or enemy, mimicking your attacks for the next 12 seconds and generating the same buffs or debuffs to the target (enemy-cast) or target of target (ally-cast). These mimicked attacks deal no damage, but deal half enmity, while the Shade also assumes 50% of all enmity you, the original, generate. Costs mana when activated, and then for every second thereafter. Using Shadewalker while a Shade is already active will swap positions with your Shade, at mana cost.

* Dream Within a Dream.... Still working on this. Needs to be a bit more mind****y, but still be simple to deploy. May be Shade or Element-based.

* May also mess with Duality slightly. Don't want to muddle too much though.

General Movement and Movement Skills:
Shukuchi is the obvious thing to buff here, increasing its range and decreasing its animation lock, and perhaps even allowing it to be a very quick channeled charge in the chosen direction that can be cancelled instantly, user-side by configuration from the Actions & Traits Shukuchi context menu, in addition to "at-target" and "at-mouseover" choices.

The rest is what I've put primarily into Shadow and Wind undermechanics. Wind increases movement speed, attack range, and allows you to advancing-strike towards the enemy by moving in or continuing to move in the target's direction mid-strike, while Shadow allows you to blink strike from stealth onto affected enemies and increases your general movement speed while stealthed. Both fade upon starting to receive these passive benefits, and can be generated by aspected skills.

[Thoro39]

Smokescreen and shadewalker are amazing in high-end savage raids. It is pretty much required in order to let a DRK play dps-optimally while maintanking, as it reduces the amount of required powerslashes/Grit uptime needed to maintain hate. Removing both would be a pretty big hit in ninja's raid utility, so unless you want to make ninja worse for a sudden, shadewalker and smokescreen should stay.

[Balipu]

Smokescreen and shadewalker are great if you use them properly particularly if you run with friends and can co-ordinate. Shadewalker means your tank can spend more time out of tank stance so they deal more damage without having to worry about losing enmity. Smokescreen means you can prevent the healer or a strong dps from catching up on enmity. They're both oGCD skills so using them doesn't even take away from your dps, it's pure benefit.

Hyoton is for pvp to stop mages and ranged from running away from you.

Just because you don't do content where skills are useful doesn't make them not useful.

No it doesn't. But they aren't useful for me. But since we both provide fedback here, SE can learn what each type of player has to say. For PVP chaces I just use Shukuchi. It's really fun.

Smokescreen and shadewalker are amazing in high-end savage raids. It is pretty much required in order to let a DRK play dps-optimally while maintanking, as it reduces the amount of required powerslashes/Grit uptime needed to maintain hate. Removing both would be a pretty big hit in ninja's raid utility, so unless you want to make ninja worse for a sudden, shadewalker and smokescreen should stay.

Good to know. Like I said I don't do Savage raids cause I know those are beyond my skill and I would be more of a burden than help. It's a shame but that's life. That's why we need more feedback and not just mine. But in the end we have two skills that are used by a small percentage of the community to compensate for the problems of one other very specific class that will most likely also get a redesign anyway.

[Thoro39]

Good to know. Like I said I don't do Savage raids cause I know those are beyond my skill and I would be more of a burden than help. It's a shame but that's life. That's why we need more feedback and not just mine. But in the end we have two skills that are used by a small percentage of the community to compensate for the problems of one other very specific class that will most likely also get a redesign anyway.

Whatever is used and valued in the highest end content, trickles down to midcore and casual groups too, as those groups tend to copy whatever hardcore groups are doing, so I would say these two skills have a way higher usage than this small "percentage" you perceive. Almost every guide about Should do's and should-not-do's , or talk about statweights for all classes is born of the necessity faced with challenging content that might be difficult without any information, but is still frequently recommended for even midcore and casual players. It's a trickle-down effect.
Just look at Gordias, where even casual groups rather looked for a DRK instead of a PLD, even though everyone was overgeared already. Only a small percentage of hardcore raiders really "needed" that DRK advantage, but everyone else below that followed it, because it was optimal.
And the concept of literally free aggro control will always be a beneficial thing as long as there are tanks and tank swaps in this game, aggro is still a thing to care about and healers still generate good amount of aggro with heals, every kind of tank, be it PLD, DRK or WAR benefits from that, not only Dark Knight. However, DRK benefits from shadewalker utilities the most

[CookieMonsta]

snip

Dude, Smokescreen and Shadewalker are DEFINING traits of Ninja that make them so desirable in pretty much any content outside of Drex, this includes, Primals, POTD, Savage and friggin Alex Normal.
Smokescreen can save BLMs and Healers from aggro death, Shadewalker allows you to direct even more emnity of existing mobs or mobs the tank can't grab easily in order to improve the engagement efficiency. You can save bad pulls by smart usage of Shadewalker and Smokescreen.
It doesn't take Savage content to figure ouy what you can use these for, just an imagination and tactical acumen.

[Balipu]

Dude, Smokescreen and Shadewalker are DEFINING traits of Ninja that make them so desirable in pretty much any content outside of Drex, this includes, Primals, POTD, Savage and friggin Alex Normal.
You can save bad pulls by smart usage of Shadewalker and Smokescreen.
It doesn't take Savage content to figure ouy what you can use these for, just an imagination and tactical acumen.

Guess it's just my bad/good luck that I was never asked to use them or was never asked why I didn't use them. I remember one time I used them on my own in the Vault when I got it in leveling roulette recently. The tank really didn't know what he was doing and the healer was in constant danger. Well that might just be DF. Perhaps they just don't know what to ask for.
But again with dot durations being short as they are I really don't have as much time for my imagination as I would like to have.