How will NIN nerfs affect them?

[Sam26]

While there solo dps is the same their party dps shoots way up because brotherhood grants them chakra when party members attack while under it. This makes their dps higher than NINs

pretty much that + most people don't seem to factor in that the NIN had the boost from his TA which is huge for a short fight like this with a Pot up... In a realistic fight the TA would also boost the MNK, MNK's dps is quite good right now according to logs.
They are the only Job that atleast get close to SAM while also bringing Mantra+ Brotherhood to the raid which isn't bad in a physical comp.

In HW its amazing utility

Again "amazing" utility? Goad wasn't that useful that time, since Nin used to be the first one running out of tp, so the Bard/Mch had to sing anyway, it was only useful when the tank or other TP user messed up and died (dd's with Invigorate on cd).
Bard for example is a job with "amazing" utility in my opinion or Mch in HW.

Something I also don't get is that we are a melee at the end of the day and have to bother with things like positionals/mechanical uptime compared to range dds+RDM/SMN (this two also bring "amazing" utility while they are range and quite mobile)
with todays design where the boss turns every few seconds to target random player with a ability it gets pretty annoying especially regarding how TA still works... They could have changed it to still apply the debuff even if you don't hit the positional like they did with drg/mnk in the past.

Don't know.. I believe that TA is NIN's blessing and curse at the same time, I apologize though for beeing a bit too emotional about the job but I'm getting tired of reading the same thing every day mostly from people that don't play themselves the job
or felt forced to switch to it because of their ("amazing utility=TA"). The raiddps difference you had in heavensward when bringing a MNK compared to NIN(same with DRG) was soo low that it didn't really matter for the content...

Last time they revealed job popularity statistics (longer ago) , NIN was the least played job along with MCH so why is the job that unpopular when it's so OP according to what many people seem to think?
I hope that someday FFlogs will be able to also show us the real benefit that TA contributates to the Raid dps since I believe that the 1.67% math is pretty lackluster because you will never have TA up on CD every minute on a realistic fight
due to encounter mechanic / our mudra CD resets and how TA is applied (it gets delayed), it also doesn't account for the first TA beeing huge (opener burst raid) and the other ones weaker since they are more random.
If you look at the Top parsed SAM log at susano ex in a 7:16 encounter time, TA was only applied 6 times, meaning atleast 1 whole TA was missed therefore the benefit for this fight should be lower than the estimated average...

sorry for offtopic ._.

[HoLoFoNo]

I keep reading stuff like "NIN has soooo much utility" by people when the only reason they are/were in the meta is TA.
Slashing Debuff? SAM who is "Meta" too and WAR who might become "Meta" after the buffs in 4.05 bring that buff too.
Smoke Screen? Nearly every DPS Job can crosskill exact that skill for themself now and even healer/tanks have access to enmity modifiering crosskills... I don't know why they didn't change/remove that ability now in SB.
Shadewalker? Atleast this Skill is somewhat useful but you usually throw it at the Tank before the pull and forget about the ability. (Atleast at the current content) I like that ability though, since it doesn't feel as useless as Smoke Screen.

Don't get me wrong TA is strong but I really don't get why people are speaking about "great/super utility" when in reality it's only TA why Nin is viable.

I'm also confused about the nerf... meanwhile they leave RDM/AST Balance/SAM untouched...

That is because (I presume) you aren't playing at the highest level. You see tanks doing 3k dps on the ex primals on fflogs? (besides padding, most tanks don't get solo balances) This is because of NIN. Shadewalker is always useful since at the current state of tanks, even with the agro buffs, tanks who are pushing very high dps are most likely not using their emnity combo. This means that the DPS that are also pushing their class to their limits are gonna start taking agro. This happens with my group in susano all the time: We have to use diversion on CD and the strongest DPS gets a smokescreen on CD and sometimes it still isn't enough. The thing is, I'm not even playing at the highest level and I'm still feeling the effects.

You could argue it is the tanks not doing their job, but it is also these tanks who are getting the boss to die fastest and if they do keep agro and not die they are extremely efficient. Stuff like this is the difference between 1% wipes and kills or world firsts. The difference between tanks that have NIN helping with agro management and don't could add up to about 100-300 dps depending on how good the group dps is (because if the group isn't pushing dps then there is no risk of losing agro). That is hugh mungus. Trick attack is also extremely busted, only beaten by the like 10 buffs BRD provides but NIN does like 12% more dps than BRD anyway.

[Sam26]

...

I played only midcore at best but cleared many of the content in HW while beeing able to pull atleast some I believe good % (90-97%) at fflogs. I agree with what you said regarding the 1% wipe/kill thing, in our grp though Shadewalker was more than enough to keep the Tank up in aggro while he stayed in DPS stance nearly the whole fight if every dps used their own aggro reduce skill. I don't believe though that the benefit is that huge since the Tank weaving an aggro rotation in sometimes at the worst case wouldn't result in a 100-300dps loss , since only the tank would lose a few potency. Also doesn't the increased dps by tanks come at the cost of healer dps? Since they have to heal and focus to keep the tank alive much more than to dps especially when tanks are abusing the 270er STR accessoire... Don't know in my opinion it's just a bad design.

Don't get me wrong, I like Shadewalker as ability too, it's like Misdirection and Tricks of the Trade from WoW, (probably a bit too high CD though) on the other hand Smoke Screen is in my opinion a wasted skill slot for our Job... It would have been somewhat
useful if it instantly deleted enmity but in it's state now where nearly everyone has access to such a skill through crosskills dunno ._.

[Lastelli]

Again "amazing" utility?

Yes. First, TA is considered utility and is massive. Second, among the melee dps jobs, nin had the least tp issues, especially if you did everything you could to avoid sks that was (and probably still is) a useless stat on nin. drg and mnk had way more problems, so goad was very useful to them (and in some cases to tanks as well). Third, shadewalker and, to a lesser extent, smoke screen were very nice to have since they basically allowed tanks to stay in out of their tank stance for 99% of the fight and this was extremely useful in early progression. NIN had amazing utility overall.

[Kalocin]

I don't see ninjas any more different then bards to machinist or red mage to black mage. You have jobs with more support that still bring high or higher dps. What we should instead focus on instead of "nerf this nerf that" is "buff this fix that" because the latter is more of an issue. I think a lot people are looking at ninjas thinking they're OP but in reality they are pretty fluid. Monks are awkward and got nothing exciting. Summoners are super awkward. Black mages are awkward with weird tuning issues. Dragoons do less damage and tether freaks people out. Machinists are on the bottom, clunk everywhere, fits name but not good for gameplay. Heck lets throw in some dark knight in there too for lower mitigation and dps. There's a reason a lot of these are being looked at and instead of trying to nerf your raid party, focus on buffing the rest up instead. (How valuable would TA be if Brotherhood was tuned differently for instance).

On a side note for other tanks: Be gentle to your ninjas and don't whip your bosses around or you'll miss that TA.

[HoLoFoNo]

Because there are 9 dps, 4 slots and right now NIN has a guaranteed spot. It has since its release. Buff comes with the issue of powercreep and the thing is, nerf is the same as a buff: it's a tool that helps regulate balance. You make it sound as if your first 2 statements aren't an issue with balance, but they 100% are. What kinda sense does it make to give classes with a lot of support high damage also? Support isn't what it is all balanced around but it is a factor, next to personal DPS and flexibilty with mechanics. If a class has all of those things in the very good catergory, it is unbalanced according to Yoshi P's own statement.

Trick attack will always be valuable if left alone. It is the sole strongest offensive utility by quite a margin (about 0.6% raid dps) and it puts NIN 2nd place on offensive utility behind current BRD (which has like 3 different abilities and 10% less personal dps, see the issue?)

[Sam26]

...

I 100% agree with you, I don't know why but I have the feeling that there is some hostility here toward the Job Nin, you have to just read/look across the boards/threads.
Nin got pushed into a supportive role in HW although some people (including myself) didn't like that change... hence we did get the lower end of the stick in HW regarding new shiny abilitys/new mechanics and
sucked 2/3 of the Addon in regard of AOE/multitarget dmg until the developer realized and fixed that a bit, yet I didn't see any real complain thread by Ninjas here and god forbid if a Nin dares to complain about
something... they get immediately attacked by other players with the argument "Nin has been meta since release so just git gud".
Atleast it feels like that...
It didn't really atleast for me feel good to play Nin through HW since you were merely reduced to TA ._. and pretty weak outside of that.


In my opinion they should just give any dps job a DMG utility that is equal strong, so that you actually can play whatever you want and not be like "OMG but that's meta that comp would do 100 more dps" even though that
this "Meta" mostly only matters for Speedkill which is more an epeen thing in my opinion for FFlogs and world first attempts...
Then certain jobs wouldn't also have to suffer outside of the raids... Since there is a bit more of the game outside of raids like solo play/4 mans etc. and while you are able to do them with any job, you still ask
yourself why you have to do way less dmg in these environments just because you are good in 8 man content?
DRG would be a good example... a DRG who does solo stuff does ~500(just an imagined number) dps less than a SAM, so SAM is allowed to do 100% of his performance the whole time he is playing the game while the DRG is only allowed to play at 75%
when he is alone, he needs a full grp to be able to do the 100% aswell.

tldr I believe that balancing DDs arround utility isn't a good thing, it leads to certain jobs beeing weak outside of 8 man content and to certain jobs beeing mandatory but how do you change that without destroying the uniqueness of the Jobs..

I appologize to you all for the ot ._. and my english it's good though to read other opinions about that issue

[Dzian]

One thing they do need to do with ninja is do something about "ten chi jin" it's incredibly slow and clunky. latency is 154 but man ten chi jin is so damn clunky I just don't touch it

[Rhyn]

It's gonna suck to be a low level ninja now when they nerf Gust Slash. It's like ~60% of sub lvl 26 damage (excluding autoattacks).

[Galvuu]

snip

What exactly is this solo content, out of curiosity? There's msq, killing stuff on the world map... and?
Most 4-man content is so easy that anything works too, so that's not an issue- when the new tomestones come out, most people pretty much do 5 dungeons a week, so that's relatively minor x)
I don't think I'm going to ask myself "why can't I clear this msq duty faster" especially when it's all scripted to death and you wait for the dialogue and scenes and all.

(And come on, NIN single target dps has always been good, even in HW. They weren't Monk or Black Mage, but they were pretty damn decent).

EDIT: note that normally it's much more important to be good on 8-man content- both to actually get clears (Savage) or to be as efficiently as possible farming hard-to-get items (primal tokens for multiple weapons and primal mounts). I do way more trials/raids than dungeons over a patch.