The Mug change, predictably, feels like garbage.

[aloneatsea]

Mug instantly deals critical magic damage to most pre-6.1 Ninja players...

[elioaiko]

Nin and Sam first?

*looks at ShB Healers and Tanks* you hear that boys we didn't get nerfed and made into carbon copies of each other 3+ years ago!

Sorry for the snark lol just this really brings to mind the whole DPS don't care about the nerfs and copy n pasting of classes until it happens to them that was going around since ShB.

Yeah I agree, tanks and healers got this treatment in ShB but we were too busy worried about "balance" and making them accessible at their own demise. I knew sooner or later they would take this mentality into balancing DPS.

I mean we should've known it was coming whenever they relegated phys ranged into nerfed dps that baits stuff sometimes and something you're obligated to bring because of the bonus.

But tbh, a lot of the game's issues stem from the fact that they took away so much battle designs that these non-selfish dps jobs/supports relied on.

NIN for enmity control? Gone.

Ranged for Refresh (MP regen) and OG Tactican for AoE enmity control? Gone.

Auto attack dmg reduction (Palisade)? Gone.

Tanks juggling enmity and dps? Gone.

Weapon resistance debuffs (Slashing, Blunt, Piercing, etc)? Gone.

While some of these things have changed for the better, it still remains that nothing was given in return for these jobs to keep their niche.

Thus the battle of the better rDPS will continue because that's the only thing that matters anymore.

[gamerseb]

I DON'T SEE THE MUG ICON AT ALL.

BUT I STILL SEE THE TRICK ATTACK ICON EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Maybe swap the icons, since 99% of the player base looks for the Trick Attack icon to throw their stuff at the boss?

[AoifeAogane]

The mug effect on the boss is just the vulnerability up icon.

I'm pretty sure that's what it looked like for trick attack before.

[aloneatsea]

The mug effect on the boss is just the vulnerability up icon.

I'm pretty sure that's what it looked like for trick attack before.

This is correct. That said, if we keep any change from this iteration of Ninja, I'd really love to keep the Trick Icon being what it is. It's just a tad more flavourful than the generic vuln-up.

[AoifeAogane]

Absolutely. But I assume they made the mug vuln icon the same for people who are used to looking for it.

[Edibleplates]

Of course SE needed to stack more of the NIN party buff in the 2m window, as other classes aren't built to take advantage of every trick attack. It's still as much of a 1m cycling rotation as it used to be (TCJ lol), it just works better with the rest of the party, as enough 2m classes aren't bursting on odd minutes (or at least, don't usually need to). If you're arguing for a 1m rotation as class identity, you still have it, you still need to play around trick attacks and burst in them. If you're arguing mug isn't thematic or it's clunky, Meisui already made gauge management clunky and awkward and forced you to dump early to optimize etc, so it is just more of the same. Maybe the skill name needs to be changed, but I don't think "trick attack" conveys "I will make you vulnerable" either, lol.
The biggest issue I can see with the changes is that NIN gets a lot less of its party damage from buffing, now, less even than DRG from what I can tell. This, in my opinion, hits its class identity as the "supportive melee" like it has historically been. SAM (even with their gracious love and acceptance of their changes, lol) still maintains its identity as the "selfish" melee, that does a lot of damage without supporting the party, but the NIN changes are as if they balanced the new SAM around a better party buff than RPR has.

[aloneatsea]

Plenty of other classes were able to take good advantage of Trick Attack, though? Not every class needs to be able to, though more do now than ever. Monk has Riddle of Fire on the same timer, Gunbreaker has 1-minute burst, Reaper and Samurai are able to pool and spend resources, Dark Knight can do the same, Dancer can drop a Standard Step inside it, Warrior lines up now with the 6.0 changes, and even WHM is able to get a Misery going once a minute after the 6.1 changes. I'm not familiar with every class, but I doubt this is an exhaustive list. Why should we remove a buff that brought so much to so many classes because a small portion weren't able to fully take advantage of it? Should we remove Dancer's Dance Partner because Samurai and Warrior don't benefit as much from increased crit rates?

I've not personally had problems with Meisui, but other have expressed it's boring or clunky in other threads about NIN. Rather than settle for "well, Meisui is also clunky, so who cares if Mug makes it worse" when you could say "both Meisui and Mug make NIN feel clunky, and should be changed"? I'm a fan of Meisui just being an oGCD that consumes Suiton and deals damage. Gives NIN some more oGCD space in burst.

I'd have to agree to disagree with you about what Trick conveys/implies, however.

You're spot on about the shift in party damage vs personal damage, though. I and likely a good few other players picked up Ninja because it was the "support melee". It really feels like these changes have eroded the very last bit of unique utility Ninja had.

[VentVanitas]

Personally, I don't care if Mug "works better" in the context of raiding or general party play. 6.1 NIN feels way too similar to MNK, and that's not a positive thing to say considering Monk doesn't even have an identity for itself. Ninjutsu and Blitz are too similar, both jobs have problems of having nothing to do or manage in downtime, both have an unremarkable job gauge that is primarily spent on one oGCD that has overcap problems, etc. I do not see the point of the TA/Mug change when they could've just buffed its potencies.

Why even bother having 60s cooldowns anymore at this point?

I’m not a monk but wasn’t their rework fairly well received?

Primarily by people that did not play the job. If what you wanted out of MNK is a standardized job that has relatively little jank, then EW MNK succeeded in that endeavour. However, that came at the cost of basically everything else that was unique to it, whether it be Greased Lightning or heavy positional gameplay. What it gained did not make up for what was lost.

[Jirah]

The real big brain play is to not play the game for a year, wait for the devs to make every Job unfun as humanly possible, and see what's left in the wreckage. Probably black mage. Nins and Sam's were just the first to suffer

In expansions past it was BRD, AST, SCH, DRK
and EW it was SMN, SAM, NIN, MCH (lack of change). To be honest it would be easier to just list all jobs they haven’t “yet” screwed up for accessibility sake

PLD, BLM, DRG, RDM, DNC, GNB, and RPR and SGE being too new to ruin yet that’s 8/19 almost half the roster is in dire need of attention and I can almost be certain they’ll end up screwing over these 8…or 7 as we all know BLM is in constant state of intensive care. WTF is going on with the job design team?