Please Revert Trick Attack.

[aloneatsea]

Hi, it's me again.


It's been a while. DSR has released, and I've really enjoyed progging through it thus far. It'll be some time before I finish it, but I think it's the best ultimate we've had yet.


Now, onto business.


Ninja still feels awful to play. Ninki management is frankly impossible, what with being forced to spend 50 Ninki right before most burst windows, meaning at best you get three Bhavacakras in a window.

There's also the matter of lost class identity. Everyone has a two-minute buff these days. It would probably be easier to list the classes that don't. (whm/sge, the tanks, blm, sam, mch? did i miss anyone? that means 12/19 classes have a two-minute buff. yeesh.)
You can argue 'oh, but the buffs vary in length or strength' but frankly this doesn't really matter. You hit the buttons at the same so the buff stacks, do your burst, and call it a day.

Ninja used to provide an immense amount of skill expression for other classes with it's iconic party buff, Trick Attack, being on a one-minute cooldown. I've spoken in other threads about how every single class was able to adjust their rotation slightly to dump resources into Trick.

Now, it doesn't. Keep in mind, Trick Attack has been in the game as a one-minute party buff longer than any of the other utility that Ninja mains mourn. Shadewalker and your other enmity tools were added with Heavensward. They might be gone, but Trick Attack remains... or it did, until Patch 6.1.

Trick Attack has sat through three whole expansions with no changes whatsoever to how it is activated or what cooldown it's on. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the only changes to Trick have been reducing the potency from 10% to 5%, but increasing the duration from 10s to 15s.

If you don't believe that Trick Attack is core and central to the identity of Ninja, let me lay this out for you. To activate Trick in battle, you must either be in stealth or have the Suiton buff. As using Hide once a fight has begun is impossible, the only other option is to use a Mudra change on Suiton.

Mudra charges have a cooldown of 20s, and you're able to hold two charges. Not so coincidentally, Suiton also has a duration of 20s. From this, we can derive that the intended gameplay of Ninja has always been to prepare Suiton in advance, wait from mudra charges to refresh, and then apply Trick Attack and burst with your remaining mudra charges. This is how it's been played for a long time.

Sometimes I see arguments about "just make Trick the two-minute cooldown, and make Mug 1 minute", but the above is why this doesn't work. Without the one-minute cycle of Trick forcing a usage of Suiton in preparation, you're left with a random mudra that be spent in a twenty-second period that will never align with burst windows. In my opinion, forcing this would be a regression on the part of playfeel.


But, we're still left with the problem of: Trick Attack is Ninja's iconic party buff. Even now, in pugs, people still ask me 'when is Trick'. This is not because they don't understand that Mug is now the party buff, and that it's on a two-minute cooldown -- it is because for years, Trick Attack has been the singular defining ability for Ninja. It's never been your Mug window, it's been your Trick Attack window. This mental perception of what Ninja is has been ingrained into the community for years, and changing that now not only feels a bit of a betrayal, but also goes against what people expect from Ninja.

So, what do we do? Trick should be the party buff, but it's routed into a 1-minute timer because of how the mudra system is designed.


You're left with two options, really:
1. Rework Ninja and the mudra system entirely to make it no longer a one-minute job.
2. Revert the changes and let me rest.

Option one is, in my opinion, the nuclear one. Ninja is -- or was -- a good job, and in 6.08, it had a high level of satisfaction. It didn't have the playrate that other jobs had because it struggled a lot in early 6.0, and also Reaper was released. None of these things are particularly concerning. Ninja was buffed a little too hard in 6.08, which was mostly fine as the playrate was still low. However, the changes to Mug and Trick made Ninja absurdly overtuned, and now we see many players turning to Ninja not because they think it's fun or it's the job they most want to play, but because it's very, very strong. Because it's a huge advantage in Ultimate progging to play a job that deals a lot of damage.

It's been interesting hearing various streamers talk about how the melees in their static picked up the job because it was so strong. If the Mug/Trick changes we made for the sake of balance, SE definitely messed up, because Ninja is even more busted in DSR than it would have been beforehand, especially with the changes to Samurai. I've anecdotally had tons of players tell me that Ninja is better than it was before, because it deals more damage now, as if it wasn't already overtuned in 6.08. Making something that deals too much damage already deal even more damage is not actually a good thing!

Yes, you could rework Ninja and completely change it. You could, technically, do that for any job. However, I would say that any changes to the mudra system aside from superficial ones (or changes to the much forgotten Hyoton) would be too much. At that point, is Ninja even Ninja? It might be a different Ninja class, but it wouldn't be the Ninja I, and other Ninja mains have played since however long ago.

The only solution that makes sense to me is to revert the changes, and restore Trick Attack. Let Mug just be a simple Ninki gainer. Let Trick Attack buff the party by 5% again, on the minute every minute. Reduce the duration, if you must. If it's still somehow too strong, let it buff the party by 4% and the Ninja by 10% or something. Mash the personal and party buffs together. We can work on improving the playfeel of Ninja after that -- fixing Ninki generation, improving the interactibility of our oGCDs, improving the Raiju QoL, maybe making TCJ something like a leylines deal.

Just roll it back. Please. Let Trick Attack be what it has always been, so I can continue to buff my teammates like I used to, and I can stop correcting people when they ask me when Trick is up.

[butchersblock]

Yes please. This is not just a Ninja problem - the game as a whole benefits from having a 1 minute raid-wide buff. Yoshida himself stated in an interview before Endwalker that making everything a 2 minute cooldown wouldn't be fun. He was right, it's not fun.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Trick was the same for years but there were also years worth of threads asking for ninja to do more damage and complaining their damage was lower due to trick attack.
indifferent if it changes or stays the same since I just cap ninja at leave it each expansion. But I think all that whining over dps is what caused the change tbh. Or at least partly is why.

[aloneatsea]

Trick was the same for years but there were also years worth of threads asking for ninja to do more damage and complaining their damage was lower due to trick attack.
indifferent if it changes or stays the same since I just cap ninja at leave it each expansion. But I think all that whining over dps is what caused the change tbh. Or at least partly is why.

After seeing your comment, I took some time to scroll through some pages of older patches, particularly around late Stormblood and the release of 5.1. While I did see a handful of threads requesting that Ninja receive higher personal damage, I also noted that responses within those threads were 50/50 on the matter. I didn't see it raised again after Trick was changed to be 5% instead of 10%.

Even more interesting is the very, very similar tone and phrasing used when discussion the 5.1 changes to Ninja (moving mudras to the GCD, among other things) in comparison to the 6.1 changes. Much concern about Ninja's identity being lost, but at the same time, much more satisfaction. A lot of assertions that Ninja mains were unsatisfied with the changes, but those who played Ninja casually/didn't play Ninja at all were much happier with the changes.

The difference between these two mini-reworks, as far as I can see, is that 5.1 changes fixed something that very literally prevented people from playing the class - reliance on low ping. As a high-ping player myself, I shudder to think of how it would have felt playing Ninja back then. It's not like I don't empathise with the people who felt they were losing the only class that played in that particular manner; no other class to date has played as fast as pre-5.1 Ninja, as far as I'm aware. That said, I also can't disagree with accessibilty in the form of physical letting other players pick up the job.

There are a lot of sentiments both now and back then about "why couldn't people who wanted these changes play another job", which I've personally echoed regarding the Trick/Mug changes. Like pre-5.1 Ninja, there is no other job that plays like it -- a high-buffing melee DPS with many ranged options. However, I find the changes in 5.1 to be much more understandable.


"I can't play this job I like because my ping prevents me from being able to weave" vs "I want to deal more damage on this class" are two very different sentiments in the end. The former I agree with making changes in the sake of, the latter I don't.

At the end of the day, Ninja already dealt a ton of damage. I can only hope that our voices are heard, and that these changes to Trick and Mug are reverted. They're not so all-encompassing that it's impossible; it wouldn't even disrupt Ninja players all that much.

I'd love to see an initiative to encourage players to stop giving a shit about the 'meta', as if it matters for anything beyond World Progging and Speed Kills. Of course, this all is moot given that Ninja already had one of the hardest-hitting abilities in the game in the form of Hyosho Ranryu, and Ninja was already an extremely meta job as of 6.08...

I just don't get it! It was already dealing so much damage! Who thinks it needed more???

[AoifeAogane]

I have taken to putting trick attack and mug on a macro together so I can mash the button a couple times and both buffs go on at around the same time. I hate it, but it's the best work around I have for maintaining the feel of ninja. The big complex attack, should be the big party-wide damage boost.

Ten-Chi-Jin-Splash-STAB!!!!!!

[Wyssahtyn]

I miss oGCD mudras sometimes.

[aloneatsea]

I miss oGCD mudras sometimes.

I kinda wish I was there to be able to try them, though I know I wouldn't have been able to play the job at all on my 200 ping. It'd definitely ruin my hands, though.

[elioaiko]

Yes please. This is not just a Ninja problem - the game as a whole benefits from having a 1 minute raid-wide buff. Yoshida himself stated in an interview before Endwalker that making everything a 2 minute cooldown wouldn't be fun. He was right, it's not fun.

It's kinda ironic that Yoshi-P said that and then greenlighted Trick Attack being 2-min CD and then every 3-min buff into 2-min.

More over, it's boring because buffing jobs don't really have creative control over how they buff, mostly just set and forget. At least AST can time their cards for the best output.

BRD should have been AoE dps buffer with strong ST defensive buffs/utility.

DNC should have been ST buffer with AoE healing/utility.

NIN honestly would feel better if it were more utility-based like in SB. I don't mind Trick being a 1-min window.

The mudra system is rather punishing and they should change it into something a bit more fluid. I wouldn't mind if they scrapped it for a combo system where for performing certain actions, grants a mudra and having ninjutsus to use every rotation.

I miss oGCD mudras sometimes.

You really don't tbh, having to weave that much was punishing. Not that it's much better, but clearly DNC has the better Simon Says system.

[butchersblock]

The mudra system is rather punishing and they should change it into something a bit more fluid. I wouldn't mind if they scrapped it for a combo system where for performing certain actions, grants a mudra and having ninjutsus to use every rotation.

A part of the appeal for a lot of Ninja players is the job's breakneck button pressing, and that's heavily contributed from the Mudra system. It's a very iconic gimmick and if they removed that I don't think I would ever consider playing Ninja again.
Let's stop completely butchering job identities, SMN and SAM were enough.

[Sangustan]

I am very much in agreement. As a (with 6.1 former) SAM player old Trick Attack was super satisfying and gave me yet another reason to be careful not to drift my burst.