I've been playing NIN from minute 1 of starting this game. I loved every part of the job, from aesthetics to game feel to my overall role in the party. I grew to love the idea of being the "support" melee. Sure I don't provide the most damage, but I was the one providing the buffs to the party the most frequently.
When 6.0 rolled around, I didn't like the raijus and how NIN felt untested as a whole, and with that (+IRL internet issues) I decided to switch off the job temporarily until it got fixed. Come 6.05, I was still unable to play in savage content (my internet was baaad at the time) but I enjoyed the NIN we had at the time. Then I watched LL69.
When I understood the new changes, I got very upset and thought about posting here, but decided to wait and see how the job feels ingame. And I have to say: although there are some parts I enjoyed with the changes, some parts I really do not like.
Let's start with the positives.
- I found that the doton changes to be completely fine.
- I actually like the feel of how Ninja plays now
Now when I say the feel of Ninja, I mean it in a very specific way: I like the concept of having 2 debuffs to juggle, and when I first read the LL slides I thought mug was getting added as an extra party debuff and was really excited. I was all in for them pushing for a support melee to help it become more unique from the other melees. The way this was taken, however, was in the complete opposite direction and leads me to the negatives.
- Trick losing the party debuff rips a core part of NIN away.
- Mug is a terrible cooldown to attach a party buff to and causes priority conflicts.
Whenever you ask an ffxiv player what they think of for NIN, they would usually have 4 responses: Naruto, edgy, trick attack, and mudras. Trick has been a staple for so long and everyone loved it. It wasn't a "pain to keep aligned", it was fun and the party loved it. I don't think I can ever recall anyone complaining about trick being 1 minute, but every single NIN main I have spoken to after LL69 has said this change was unneeded and they disliked it. I even feel slighted whenever I use trick and see a debuff show up, but then suddenly remember that's only for me. Overall, the change for the sake of "synergy" was out of nowhere, uncalled for, and was not a pleasant surprise in the least. There's no need to make it fit for synergy when it already has synergy. 120s is divisible by 60s. And with it being 2 minutes now, it feels worse than many of the other two minute buffs. At least the others actually buff the players, so it works perfectly fine in 1 or 2+ target situations. Mug can only pick one target, AND it's two minutes. It's just a worse party buff.
As for mug, I feel that mug having a party buff attached to it is a terrible idea because of the ninki attached to it already. It can cause a form of conflict in which you want the extra ninki, but the buff is more important (this is especially important in the opener for bunshin).
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