Ninja Toolkit in Dawntrail - some complaints

[ElliotGardner]

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So, I'm sitting in the office right now and I have nothing to do. I got fired anyway so F YOU COMPANY I AM WORKING FOR.

Anyway. I need to get this off of my chest. I am not quite happy with the changes made to Ninja in Dawntrail and I want to express what I mean as well as how it could have been done better.

For those of you who recently started playing the game in Dawntrail - back in Endwalker and previous expansions the Ninja had an attack speed buff called Huton. This 3-step Ninjutsu was, and still is executed by pressing Jin-Chi-Ten. This buff was granted for 60 seconds and needed to be extended by 30 seconds using Armor Crush at Lv54 or by 10 seconds using Hakke Mujinsatsu at Lv52 in a combo respectively.
The system was there, it worked for almost 10 years and it was completely fine. It gave something to micromanage which was not heavily difficult to do so.

With Dawntrails launch this attack speed buff was shifted into a trait at Lv45. No job quest needed, you get it once you hit Lv45.
At first glance this seems pretty neat. It removed the micromanaging part, making it more appealing for players with a low skill floor. However the corresponding changes made to certain actions as a result of this shift is what I'm not happy with.

Changes to the Huton Ninjutsu

Huton is now an aoe attack which grants the buff Shadow Walker, making Kunai's Bane (goold ol' Trick Attack) accessable. While this change is fine, it gets the job done - moving the buff to Doton would be the better solution for this.
At first this wouldn't change much. You would use Doton at the start, use some GCD's, slam out Kunai's Bane and go nuts. However, moving forward into the rotation you'd use TCJ (Lv70 ability), use Doton again resulting in getting Shadow Walker a second time, convert the buff with Meisui and buff the next Deathfrog Medium. Yeah, this would also need a slight change to Meisui and DM but I personally think this change would make the aoe rotation much smoother and let us use everything in our toolkit, even in aoe. Well, almost everything as we cannot use any Raijus in aoe. Burning Raiju as a Katon follow-up please?

[ElliotGardner]

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Armor Crush and the Kazematoi Gauge
With the Huton management being gone, Armor Crush had to get another purpose - thus the Kazematoi Gauge was born. Using Armor Crush in a combo grants 2 stacks of the Kazematoi Gauge, each stack increases the potency of Aeolian Edge by 100.
Honestly, this whole gauge feels tacked on. To me it feels like the devs desperately wanted to keep the weaponskill in the game and attached a whole new system to it. I think removing Armor Crush and buffing Aeolian Edge by a bit wouldn't change much if anything at all.
Armor Crush could have also been a stand-alone weaponskill with a dot attached to it. Or even better, remove the damn thing and give me my boi Shadowfang back!

Shadowfang back in Shadowbringers (huh, fitting right?) used to be what Sonic Break is for Gunbreaker (I almost wrote Gonebreaker lmao) - a stand-alone weaponskill which did an initial 300 potency hit and also applied a dot for 30 seconds with 60 potency each tick. We had an unbuffed 900 potency hit at Lv30. And the animation. Ohmygod, the animation was crisp af. You did a lil' backflip, kicked the enemy from upside down and went back to business.
Iirc we used to open up our TA window with Shadowfang and whenever that happened I was like "alright, here we go again!!!!" It was so satisfying to do. But the devs removed the weaponskill in Endwalker. Sad Ninja cries.

Dokumori not being aoe
Do I need to say more? Every other raid buff is aoe, but Dokumori is not? Yoshi P, my brother in Hydaelyn, please make it aoe.

Overall I don't think the changes made to Huton were neccessary. The system was not something too difficult to manage. Yeah, it made Lv50 content a bit tricky because Armor Crush is not available at that level - but seriously, who cares about Lv50 anyway?

Reverting the Huton overhaul, moving Shadow Walker to Doton and changing Meisui and Deathfrog Medium to interact with that would have been a far better improvement for the job, at least in my opinion.

What do you think about that? I'd love to have a conversation about this topic. Oh, and please let it be a polite one. The forums are already cursed as they are.