Thread: 5.1 NIN slowed down and uninteresting

So this is just my opinion but the new 5.1 NIN update kinda ruined my main class and made the game not as fun.

First off, they changed it to where you cant cue up Mundras while doing combos. What makes NIN and Rogue fun is that you’re always quickly pressing buttons. It can be confusing and ‘clunky’ for sure to be using mundras and combos and the like but if you wanted a structured class move to Samurai or literally any other class. Not saying ninja wouldnt use reform. Now Ninja is just a boring combo mundras combo mundras combo mundras combo mundras combo mundras style fight.

They even removed Shadow Fang from the combos so now you only have 1 combo path. And before Shadow fang didnt stack so there was no harm in repeatedly being able to use it especially since its potency was only 200 it was actually a waste to use it too much. But it was nice when running dungeons and smaller enemies to be able to use it each new enemy instead of getting to use it for one enemy then waiting 60 seconds, beating 7 enemies and then getting to use it again for just minuscule amounts of damage.
Although this one doesnt bother me as much as slowing down the ninja actions. It does make the ninja more boring.

Although I can agree Ninja could use some reform, making it slowed down and making it to where you have to follow a set pattern, combo mundras combo mundras without even variations in the combo (and lets be real only the lightning mundras is useful in most situations or the water one. So you’re not really doing much there.) really slowed down ninja. Rogues are suppose to be quick and unpredictable, yet now it has a very structured slow and boring key pattern. I can concede ninja is a little awkward but honestly its just a problem for people who don’t main the class. For people who actually main the class being able to cue up mundras and switch up combos is the best part of playing a Rogue or Ninja class.

I am curious to hear other people’s opinions, although please note if you are a Nin main or other main because I think that makes a difference.

Repost for me but since you wanted opinions heres mine basically:

I overall enjoy the changes. Have been a nin main since release of nin (yes even in 5.0 i refused to switch)

We are still the highest cpm class. But by a smaller margin now.

Latency effects us way less.

Planning and properly holding during downtime/non trick is still involved especially in planning specific fights

We are become what i hoped as a hybrid melee. (I constantly say i want 2 more melee classes added that are hybrid melee so melee can be split like ranged and caster were into melee/hybrid) by properly learning fights we can basically have 100% gcd uptime now once we learn to hold ninjutsus right.

Damage still needs at least a week to see where 5.1 sets us, but it feels good enough to me right now.

Our burst is better than ever.

My big and only serious complaints are:

SkS still sucks. About 30% of our gcd time is uneffected by sks. I think all out gcd moves should be effected by sks but at the least: If not the .5 second mudra casts, the 1.5 ninjutsu casts and the 1 second casts mid tcj should be effected by sks. So what if it means players might clip weaving after a ninjutsu. Now thats their choice. Shadowfang which should be effected well by sks is not because it cant be kept up anymore and even with high sks its a loss via drift from trick if used to full potential.
Bunshin which should have been the most sks effected skill is now completely disconnected from it since it has a set 5 charges.
Its just bad and that upsets me greatly. I want to be a speedy ninja.

Movement away from blade play and rogue type of combat.

Despite planning that has to be done the 45seconds of non trick are.... pretty boring. Not crazy boring but. Yeah not exciting either.

I'm split on the changes to NIN honestly. I've played ninja since it was released as my main class but honestly the changes have me trying other classes like samurai, bard, and even non-dps classes like paladin and white mage. I don't like the 2 charges being added to Ten/Chi/Jin since applying Huton consumes and entire charge! Yes I know we have Kassatsu and Ten Chi Jin abilities as well but I feel those are more situational.
I took an extended break (basically all of stormblood) from the game due to work and life reasons. When I came back right before Shadowbringers I enjoyed ninja but by far the 5.0 ninja was the best. I've been enjoying the DwD into assassination and the combo with death blossom.

To wrap up I can see where they wanted to take ninja but I think it wasn't executed in the best way possible. Is ninja still enjoyable? Sure but it's a bit slower in my opinion and sometimes taking your time and slowing things down can actually lead to learning the class better or even getting better at that class. So I'm not going the say the changes are 100% bad, but it could've been done better.

I feel moving Mudras to the GCD was a good change. However, I think it could have been done in a way that let the NIN retain its previous APM.

A brief reminder: GCDs have ping-compensation. oGCDs do not. Every oGCD will claim twice your ping (there and back, so to speak) of uptime in addition to the baseline 0.6 seconds of animation lock, with the exception of mudras, which already may have been a unique hybrid at 0.5 seconds base and seemingly had some ping-compensation.

Moving the mudras to the GCD guarantees up to 250 ms of ping-compensation. That's good. Just by categorizing them in the same way as other weaponskills we apparently already benefit accordingly. But...

Why then add the "Conversely, execution of weaponskills triggers the cooldown of this action" clause? We know from HW-era Empyreal Arrow that skills which trigger the global cooldown or any part of it can offer ping-compensation as per any other GCD; they do not necessarily also have to be affected by the global recast timer.

Essentially, it seems like we could have had the ping-compensation without actually forcing downtime between the previous weaponskill and the mudra cast, so... why slow the combat down unnecessarily? Did they just feel that Ninja wouldn't appeal to players who don't currently play Ninjutsu casts gave a minimum of some 500 potency and needed to make it cost more uptime accordingly? And why the 1.5 seconds on Ninjutsu? We can only benefit from the ping compensation of the first half-second. Why then slow it down? Just to give room for an immediate Trick Attack every time despite that we are already used to using Suiton up to 20 seconds in advance of Trick Attack?

We weren't limited to just Slow or Ping. We easily could have had both ping-compensation and almost wholly kept our old speed. So why the sudden and unnecessary change to the playstyle?

Originally Posted by Rivinhal

I'm speculating here, but maybe it's because players consistently complained about how NIN had to "work harder but had less damage to show for it"?
SE probably assumed that instead of just fixing the ping issue, they'd reduce NIN's APM. Doing so (alongside the TA fix) would allow for some substantial potency buffs, and suddenly players wouldn't be "working harder for less" anymore.

Seems like another "Monkey's Paw" situation, I think.

It's possible. It seems like they'd have to actively neglect the opinions garnered over its last 3 iterations, though, where it had both high apm and decent output and therefore received virtually no complaints apart from "'I'd like to be able to actually play it competitively' - guy from more than 500 miles from the server."

Seems more malicious acquiescence than mere worst-solution happenstance to me. But, hey, the developers probably think we devote a hand to picking our for quarter of all our uptime, so maybe it was an honest mistake?

Originally Posted by Rivinhal

SE probably assumed that instead of just fixing the ping issue, they'd reduce NIN's APM.

How would you propose they fix the ping issue? I have high ping because I'm 100s of miles from the datacenter, not from any fault of SEs. I appreciate them making NIN playable for me.

I'll have to give these changes a try. I stopped playing ninja because there was too much going on.

Originally Posted by TheWinterSakura

So this is just my opinion but the new 5.1 NIN update kinda ruined my main class and made the game not as fun.

First off, they changed it to where you cant cue up Mundras while doing combos.

?? I thought I had tried this in 5.0, and found that mudra keys broke combos. Still, I agree that the GCD wait feels bad when it is time to go from a completed combo to the mudras.