Trick Attack

[aloneatsea]

Mantra is not the end all be all of ultimate content- since all the content in the game is designed around being cleared by all jobs - utility will never be the end all be all.

We'll see how the changes turn out, but I'm quite frankly very hopeful

I might be misunderstanding, but I believe the point he's making is also somewhat along the lines of 'what makes Ninja special, relative to other melee jobs?'. Before these changes, you would obviously say Trick being on a 1 minute timer. After these changes, what makes Ninja distinct from Monk, or Reaper? I can't think of anything. If I were playing another role alongside a Ninja, how I'm thinking about playing my job is now exactly the same as if I were a Monk or Reaper. Dump burst in 2min party buffs, and then ignore for the rest of the fight.

[Theihe]

I might be misunderstanding, but I believe the point he's making is also somewhat along the lines of 'what makes Ninja special, relative to other melee jobs?'. Before these changes, you would obviously say Trick being on a 1 minute timer. After these changes, what makes Ninja distinct from Monk, or Reaper? I can't think of anything. If I were playing another role alongside a Ninja, how I'm thinking about playing my job is now exactly the same as if I were a Monk or Reaper. Dump burst in 2min party buffs, and then ignore for the rest of the fight.

In my opinion there needs to be a distinction between "how it feels to play alongside NIN" and "how it feels to play NIN". These changes seem like they won't have any real impact on how the job actually feels to play. And when it comes to "how it feels to play alongside X" I would always de-prioritize such an aspect when it comes to adjusting X.

Your previous comment about how it might change the Mug placement - I don't think it will actually have that big of an impact. It would be enough to make Mug's duration 20 sec and our rotation will stay virtually the same, the only minor change being that Mug will need to be kept on cooldown as opposed to allowing it to drift to manipulate Ninki generation. And even if Mug is 15 sec we would most likely have to use it on the same spot anyways.

But we'll see, atleast for me personally I cannot see why people are losing their marbles

[dadong]

In my opinion there needs to be a distinction between "how it feels to play alongside NIN" and "how it feels to play NIN". These changes seem like they won't have any real impact on how the job actually feels to play. And when it comes to "how it feels to play alongside X" I would always de-prioritize such an aspect when it comes to adjusting X.

It's simply because ninja has always been a "how it feels to play alongside NIN" job and now it's having and identity crisis. you can see why people are losing their marbles

[aloneatsea]

In my opinion there needs to be a distinction between "how it feels to play alongside NIN" and "how it feels to play NIN". These changes seem like they won't have any real impact on how the job actually feels to play. And when it comes to "how it feels to play alongside X" I would always de-prioritize such an aspect when it comes to adjusting X.

I disagree, actually! For a job which relies a lot on buffing allies, I would consider how it feels to play alongside NIN just as important as how it feels to play NIN. I think this sort of thing should be considered for all jobs, to an extent -- for example, Black Mage wants to stay still as much as possible to keep uptime with its casts (and remain in leylines), but it is given a myriad of tools to allow it to move so that it's not burdensome for either the Black Mage or its team to play alongside it. Even so, the limited mobility of Black Mage is something I would take into account, relative to the higher mobility of Summoner or Red Mage. This is just an example, however.

I can understand why it might make more sense to prioritise the gameplay feel of a job over how it impacts other classes, and I would generally agree with you that when changes are incoming, the preservation of the gameplay feel of the job itself takes more precedence over how it impacts others. Despite this, I can't agree that in a team game, designed to play in groups of 4 or 8, "how it feels to play alongside X" isn't important enough to consider. I think that the interactions between different jobs with their various quirks is one of the many things that makes this game incredibly fun to play.

Regarding Mug

I would also have to disagree here, though we're definitely arguing on a shaky foundation, given we don't know the exacts of how these changes will shake out. Despite this, there is a definitive 'best time' to activate party buffs in the opener, which is exactly where we currently pop Trick Attack. Popping the Mug buff earlier (to leave the current opener unchanged) would desync that buff from other party buffs. Embolden, for example, is 20s, and is generally popped at the same time as Trick. This would also do nothing for the fact that Ninja currently struggle to fit its entire burst into the 15s window on odd/TCJ windows. I would imagine that Mug and Trick would be double-weaved together to ensure alignment with other party buffs. Extending the duration of Mug doesn't really impact when we pop it, because we will always want to synchronise with other party buffs as much as possible, givne that they're multiplicative. Searing Light is, I think, the longest party buff at 30s (? not 100% on this), so at the very least we would want to pop Mug at the same time as Searing Light, to maximise their overlap.