Trick Attack

[RyuDragnier]

Although, if balancing for criterion is their main concern, wouldn't the physical ranged classes have to be completely reworked so they can pull their weight? I have no idea how dancer and bards perform in 4 man dungeons, but I imagine quite a bit worse compared to other classes like monk or reaper. I still think this theory is the best explanation we have right now, but it does raise more questions than it answers. The minds of the devs are truly mysterious. Current trick wouldn't do too well in 4 man dungeons, but probably still better than dancer, bard, and maybe even mch. Those jobs would logically be prioritised first since they're the ones that needs to be adjusted the most? I really wish that in the 9 years of leading ffxiv yoshida would have learned that explaining things = good, but I guess not.

The physical range would perform the same as we always do in dungeons. We use stuff on cooldown, and do not save anything unless there's a window where a target cannot be hit or a fight is about to be over, since we can overcap on gauge, cause drift for our openers and 2m rotations, or lose our buffs. Or at least that's how I've always done it, no clue if it's optimal or not for dungeons since I've never really looked into that. Our damage is often good enough to push and I've even out DPS'd people easily on a DNC/BRD (which always makes me cry).

[Manofpassion]

Assuming the new criterion dungeons function the same as regular dungeons but just harder, then trick shouldn't be an issue I imagine? Physical ranged dps is indeed good enough for dungeons - if criterion has enrages I imagine the dps check will still be quite low, to make up for comps like paladin, astro, summoner and dancer. The hardest part of dungeons is mob packs anyway, and nin has ludicrous aoe damage that doesn't rely on trick. The more I think about it, the more I doubt the change is for criterion. Changing trick now for a mode we know nothing about and have no set date for is a poor decision in my opinion.

I really wish the devs would just explain things so we didn't have to all grasp at straws. They claim they want feedback on the forums, but its hard to give any feedback when we are told next to nothing. Some people here have given good sensical feedback on what little we have, like aloneatsea and kackal_jackal, doing the devs job for them. Imagine how much better the feedback would be if we just knew a bit more.

[LeonKeyh]

I feel like it's also an attempt to clean up the possibility of drift on the party buff as well. I can't really think of any other party-wide buff that is essentially behind a "gate", others are just "Push button; Get/Give DPS."

I realize _good_ players won't do this, but if you for some reason use your mudras, you need to wait for the mudras to come back in order to use Trick attack. Also, to get it put out as soon as it comes back, you have to be casting Suiton before it's ready which may lead to some drift. Now, if a NIN messes that up in anyway, it'll only affect them.

I think the balancing for Criterion is definitely more likely to be the reasoning, but at the very least, it will clean that up a little as well.

[dadong]

i feel like people who drift trick will drift mug as well. Trick was always a timer for you to know when to dump your dps be and it so happened to buff the party as well. Now that the party buff is on a completely arbitrary button, lower skill players are probably gonna drift that more because their focus will ways be on trick attack to self buff.

[Manofpassion]

Yeah. If you can't use trick on time and cooldown, there's nothing to suggest that people will magically know how to use brothermug on time and on cooldown.

Even then, I think people saying trick being drifted is terrible is making it seem worse than it actually is. Trick is gonna get drifted throughout a long fight, no doubt about it. We're only human, drifting it by a millisecond or even 2 secs is not the end of the world. While i have only cleared up to p3s, I personally have never delayed trick so much that it falls behind the rest of the group's raidbuffs significantly. Perhaps 2 seconds off at most, but that's not the end of the world. Other classes are played by humans too, so chances are, they will also drift slightly. We're called trick bots, but I doubt even the best ninja in the world can avoid drift with laser precision like a robot could.

A lot of fights have downtime, so there is time to recover if you did somehow mess it up entirely. You want to hold raid buffs before limit cut on p2s, and you want to do so for adds on p3s and on the second experimental gloryplume/trail of condemnation. These are checkpoints throughout the fight that allow you to try to fix things, providing gaps that give time for trick to go off cooldown and reset. I take these times gratefully as a chance to recover should I have messed up terribly. The fights are, in my opinion, already designed to account for natural human error. If the fights are designed to already mitigate any potential drifting, then why change the jobs at all?

[aloneatsea]

I really don't think that 'solving people drifting Trick' is the reason for these changes. Mug is an oGCD, which means it runs roughly the same risk of drifting as Trick (assuming Suiton is up), and pretty much every other party buff in the game. I don't think managing Suiton is a major problem for people either - if it were so difficult and problematic to manage Suiton, I imagine the need for it would have been removed a while before these changes.


The criterion dungeons thought is a good one, though one I also draw issues with. If the idea is the make Ninja more powerful in four-man content (presumably Criterion dungeons), you also have to consider other aspects of the kit that are available in dungeons -- namely Hide. Ninja is uniquely able to get a portion of its burst back on demand almost for free. Given that dungeon mobs tned to come in packs, leaving combat for two seconds to refresh your mudras is not a tall order. Additionally, if Ninjas were underpowered in 4-man content, I'd expect to see them be drastically underepresented in endgame dungeon speedrunning -- which doesn't seem to be the case. Admittedly, I don't have all the numbers, and certainly I don't have access to the level of information that SE has, but I'd be very surprised if this was the catalyst. Perhaps I'm very wrong, and Ninjas are simply weaker in 4-man content. If that were the case, I'd rather Criterion dungeons have their own balancing system or be removed entirely. Quality over quantity. I'd much prefer to have a single raiding system that feels good, rather than two systems where my job feels bad. Obviously, this won't happen, but these are my feelings on the matter.

I feel inclined to take the devs at their word -- that Trick is being demoted for 'alignment' issues that i've yet to see exist. Until we see the full extent of the changes, it's very difficult to draw any other conclusions.

Nevertheless, I have yet to see any satisfying reason for the Trick changes, and if the developers are indeed reading this, I must again ask that they reconsider these changes. I've yet to see anyone genuinely excited about them -- only those who think it's fine, and those who are vehemently against it.

[Kolsykol]

The only delays of TA in the current tier that comes to mind for me is in P2S and P4S Phase 2.
In P2S before the limit cut happens you'll just waste TA if you use it on CD there, you just wait until the mechanic is resolved and then re-open with TA.
And in P4S Phase 2 on Act 2, I dunno if it's the norm or if TA just comes off CD there at the end of it I honestly can't remember.
But I know that I re-open again after the last tower has gone off.

I've read some people say that they don't use TA on the adds in P3S I dunno why tho, TA is off CD again when the boss becomes targetable may as well use it.

[Manofpassion]

The only delays of TA in the current tier that comes to mind for me is in P2S and P4S Phase 2.
In P2S before the limit cut happens you'll just waste TA if you use it on CD there, you just wait until the mechanic is resolved and then re-open with TA.
And in P4S Phase 2 on Act 2, I dunno if it's the norm or if TA just comes off CD there at the end of it I honestly can't remember.
But I know that I re-open again after the last tower has gone off.

I've read some people say that they don't use TA on the adds in P3S I dunno why tho, TA is off CD again when the boss becomes targetable may as well use it.

Sorry, I meant using trick for the small birds, but then not and holding it on the large birds. By holding it there, trick and any potential drift will reset. I guess if your dps is so high that the birds die before it resets makes it a moot point though.

[RaevusAstra]

Simply removing criterion dungeons instead of balancing the few jobs that need adjustments for it is a poor idea imo. People have been begging for small scale hard content, and it'll definitely be more casual than 8 man raids, but the answer isn't to delete it if two or three jobs have trouble, just to balance for it instead.

The answer could also be non obvious. Perhaps throughout certain parts of a criterion, certain parts of the dungeon experience are more streamlined. Perhaps AOE dps is more important in certain sections than single target performance is, and ranged dps could simply be better at this than what's available to most melee dps. Perhaps black mage is stronger than Red Mage at single target, but weaker at AOE. The balance team could be crafty about how to deal with that while keeping raid balance intact.

However, specifically in the case of Trick, more frequent buffs is proportional to more party reliance, as we've determined time and time again on this thread. Bringing the party buff alignment up to speed with every other melee makes the melee role easier to balance within itself, no doubt.

I'd also like to point out that people online who voice their opinions the most are more than likely the people who do not like the changes, especially before they've played it. People who like the change are more likely to determine they've liked it after having played Ninja, which is why you're probably not seeing as many posts compared to the more fervent reaction to "We're making mug a party buff and removing it from Trick!" IMO, to make a balance decision before we've got our hands on the changes is silly, especially if they feel like they've got a good reason for this. I don't feel like it'll change how ninja plays much regarding the rotation other than a shift in ogcd placement (and mug isn't a very powerful ogcd anyway aside from ninki gain) because aside from TCJ and Phantom Kamaitachi, Ninja is all about bursting every 1 min and we still have that with 6.1 Trick. But we'll see. Regardless of whether the change is good or not for gameplay feel, paired with the right potency changes I definitely see it as a buff in 4 man and solo content for Ninja right now.

[dadong]

The only delays of TA in the current tier that comes to mind for me is in P2S and P4S Phase 2.
In P2S before the limit cut happens you'll just waste TA if you use it on CD there, you just wait until the mechanic is resolved and then re-open with TA.
And in P4S Phase 2 on Act 2, I dunno if it's the norm or if TA just comes off CD there at the end of it I honestly can't remember.
But I know that I re-open again after the last tower has gone off.

I've read some people say that they don't use TA on the adds in P3S I dunno why tho, TA is off CD again when the boss becomes targetable may as well use it.

You can have a full burst trick (sans tcj) on limit cut in p2s if you open with a first gcd trick, and the rest of your group is doing the 5 min pot window.

I'd also like to point out that people online who voice their opinions the most are more than likely the people who do not like the changes, especially before they've played it. People who like the change are more likely to determine they've liked it after having played Ninja, which is why you're probably not seeing as many posts compared to the more fervent reaction to "We're making mug a party buff and removing it from Trick!" IMO, to make a balance decision before we've got our hands on the changes is silly, especially if they feel like they've got a good reason for this. I don't feel like it'll change how ninja plays much regarding the rotation other than a shift in ogcd placement (and mug isn't a very powerful ogcd anyway aside from ninki gain) because aside from TCJ and Phantom Kamaitachi, Ninja is all about bursting every 1 min and we still have that with 6.1 Trick. But we'll see. Regardless of whether the change is good or not for gameplay feel, paired with the right potency changes I definitely see it as a buff in 4 man and solo content for Ninja right now.

I think alot of the discontent from ninja stems from the fact that the changes they made will more detrimental than beneficial. By unlinking the raidbuff from trick means that mug now has to be used off cooldown and is another thing people will have to micro manage whereas pre 6.1 mug can be drifted into trick window or be used off cooldown, and newer players who forget about pressing it means it's not the end of the world. It adds another level of needless restriction to the ninja rotation. Yes we don't know what the specifics are but with what little information we have, we can speculate on the following:

mug debuff is longer than trick buff = play as normal keeping mug off cd
trick buff longer than mug = a world of pain where you need to trick, fill with gcds, mug and then burst.

the best case scenario is you need to make sure you have another cooldown to be pressed immediately, worst case scenario you're burst window is more complicated.