Ninjas want better buff!

[Whim]

Originally Posted by Gideous

I would forward this to Whim and/or Nijlo. Some good ideas in here that might get some attention.

I check these forums periodically, so I'll see anything that pops up as long as it's reasonably visible. =)

The "really?" comment I made was more of a snarky response to the "more buffs for locks, nobody cares about ninjas just delete us" stuff. It's a pretty ridiculous statement, and the problem with that kind of navelgazing (even if it's potentially just tongue in cheek) is that the momentum of general opinion loves to pick up on that kind of negativity and feed on itself until it becomes an "internet truth".

- strong +dex component added to Hakanai Shouten
- hurricane kick and au-sem-mao scaling greatly improved
- additional anti-dodge/parry benefits to high mastery hurricane kick/au-sem-mao
- added buff to unseen motion with greater potential than many other post-100% buffs
- fixes to impairment scaling to bring meaning back to impairments
- fixes to impairment stat assignment so that ubiquitously high willpower doesn't impact all impairments
- quickblade boost

... in just the four or five months since I've been coding new features. I'm not saying those are the be-all and end-all fixes to ninja, but seriously - come on. =)

If I seem a little reactionary to this kind of negative statement, it's only because I have to wade through a metric ton of it with every change I make. The thing is, not all negative statements are unconstructive; there are many truly insightful, well-thought out rebuttals to my changes which I honestly appreciate. Those are the rebuttals which tend to lead to future improvements - for example, the analysis one player recently sent me regarding resists. (To paraphrase and summarize: "In your last pass at race rebalancing, I think you laid on the magical/elemental resists too thickly. This might be an overlooked reason as to why sorc/witch feel pretty weak even with other buffs to them. For example, here is a breakdown of all of the magical/elemental resists across each race...") That is GOOD STUFF. It's calm and rational, it has research and examples behind it, and it doesn't presume to judge a system based on personal bias or preconceived notions without hands-on testing or related live examples. Everything else, unfortunately, just takes up valuable time I could be using for more productive purposes. =)

[Syveril]

mmm okay I want to make a post in the spirit of good discussion, but I'll move it over the suggestions. http://www.nodeka411.net/forum/showt...?p=582#post582

[Syveril]

Originally Posted by Whim

- strong +dex component added to Hakanai Shouten
- hurricane kick and au-sem-mao scaling greatly improved
- additional anti-dodge/parry benefits to high mastery hurricane kick/au-sem-mao
- added buff to unseen motion with greater potential than many other post-100% buffs
- fixes to impairment scaling to bring meaning back to impairments
- fixes to impairment stat assignment so that ubiquitously high willpower doesn't impact all impairments
- quickblade boost

Thanks, btw. The improvements so far have made a big difference.

While I'm personally in a position of being completely underwhelmed by the power of unseen motion (it WOULD be awesome at 600%, but I'm looking at an investment I can't even afford for mediocre returns at 250% -- yes, I realize this is a personal statement and not representative of the ability generally or my class as a whole), the overall improvement to hurricane kick and au-sem-mao have been a god-send.

The anti dodge/parry I'm not really looking forward to, as I'm rarely dodged or parried anyway if I'm running around with tons of dex. What I see is a ton of evasions, which... yeah. I will end up practicing hk/asm for the damage boost, but right now (personally), evasion's the sticking point in offense for me. I do have problems with NR, and sometimes with landing attacks (for serious, I'm tired of landing 9 attacks out of 21 with formation running -- talk about an ability not keeping up), but I see that there's a subclass that bypasses NR, and nothing to be helped about evasion.

I do still feel that stun feels a little weak (landing full stuns, but not landing subsequent attacks or preventing very many attacks from victim), but I think a large part of that is I'm unable to overcome difficult to hit and evasion. One of the largest sources of frustration is that there's no visible way to overcome this... but at the same time maybe I'm just not meant to hit. If I had mesh and throw, that might make up for lack of combat ability, but it's the lack of a direction to grow in that creates the greatest urge to squeak about my class.

I think it's why we keep asking for more abilities: there's not a lot of room for growth in a ninja character... the mud has outgrown a ninja's strengths, and it would be nice to have a more interesting playstyle. The more battle locking occurs, the more boring the play is. A poliir makes more decisions in combat than a ninja does. I basically spam stun. It's sort of boring. There's no setup for the kill, no strike and vanish into the shadows, no crippling someone with poison and fleeing, just hope that stun will work better. There's no layering defense, choosing between offensive and defensive moves, uproot(!), impairing movement, it's just... I don't like the feel of this class anymore, but I always get the sense that it's almost there. That's why I care. If I couldn't imagine what some added utility would feel like on this class, I would already be another class.

Does that make sense? This sounds too much like a blog post already. Anyway, thanks to Whim for the reviews so far, and I look forward to more great changes whenever W and N have the time. Everytime something changes, I feel like we're living in exciting times.

[Fenulia]

I love the changes to Hurricane/ASM. Still a little whiffy, but I suspect with more pracs(and especially PI) they should be working like mini-fireballs again.

Unseen Motion+Difficult to Hit: Actually, I think it's at 700%(100% base, then +1% DTH per 6% over that) that it will max out.

Stun: Yeah, it does have that feeling of being "left behind". Especially when 2 out of the 4 classes with stepped impairment get instant versions. The only reason I keep bringing this up is that it does have relevance with regards to being able to land all your preventions and/or 1 or 2 lag moves during the period when the opponent is impaired. Admittedly, it's less relevant in the same way as with all burst damage as HP goes up, but it's still a consideration. Sticking in antei of formation helps a little, but I doubt the extra hits/dex/overall damage per round makes up for the loss of endurance(and +hit) after that, compared to Monks(with stances!) and Valkyries(song of striking/ruin, whose combined cost is below formation, even with the cost of alluring grace thrown in). Eliminating the specific bias against stun(every other class with impairments can bypass anti-stun ala Wicked Fidelity.)

Speaking of Antei of Formation, I wouldn't mind seeing it get a much lower prevention. The sheer endurance cost of it means only someone approaching 50k endurance would be able to keep spamming it without losing hit/dam.

1813*20=36260. This is the minimum amount of total endurance(36260) you need before you can regenerate it back in one minute(or in other words, if the prevention is reduced to the same length as hakanai shouten). At that size, your HP is probably at or about 50k as well, so the fights would be lasting long enough to spam it maybe 3 times at most(compared to maybe once at the start, and a second time, if you got lucky with time-bending, at the current prevention time). If you throw in Flowering Spirit as well, that adds another 11840 to the amount of endurance you need(total 48100!) before you can spam both and regenerate the same in the tick(in combat).

Also, if I calculated correctly, you'd need over 10 million endurance before hitting the +15 hit/dam cap anyways.

Quickblade: I'll stop bitching about the speed requirement for double hits for now. Could we lower the prevention on this? A Ninja seldom gets into mass fights anyway(NR too low, even good quickness still lets some hits through), so between the endurance cost and the potential health hazards, only a bigger ninja(10k or more endurance, 30k or more HP) would use this to run, and it would improve their running speed by allowing them to engage multiple targets, as well as damaging them(and if you can't kill more than half the enemies hit within 60 seconds, half of the damage is usually regenerated anyways).

Summary for the tl;dr crowd: Lowering prevention on Formation and Quickblade only produces self-correcting "problems"(ie, nobody small would abuse them, especially seeing as they're major remort moves, so you really shouldn't be that small when you can use them), and makes larger majors more relevant/useful in a fight(with maximum endurance to spam formation+flowering, and maybe quickblade if nothing bigger than your current opponent is in the room), as well as upping their running speed. Stun needs tweaks.

[grimm]

Can we trade physical intens for enhanced dmg please?
________
KLONOPIN REHAB ADVICE

[Odinn]

I think that ninjas could probably use an auto attack that always lands(except evasion? ) while doing some damage it would also add a -Nr affect that could stack to X number and then increase with training.

Since ninja's are ninja's and should be the best at finding weakness' wouldn't it make sense if they did more damage over time?

It could even play into flanking with a prevention ability allowing the ninja to make the opponent easier to flank.

To me ninjas should have lots of attacks, high accuracy and funky kungfus.

[grimm]

I don't ask for much, and again we've been requesting this for ages:

1. Shorter prevention on antei of formation (balances out the ridiculous endurance toll)
2. Have whispering wind on a different prevention than hakanai shouten
3. Joufu's arc does something other than capping at 100% for both attacks
4. Yeah and we get trail concealment and marauders lose it :P

Once we get these i'll be happy with ninjas....i will srsly.


and why aren't there any skills that ignore evasion. whyyy whyyy!
________
STARCRAFT II REPLAYS

[Fenulia]

According to Dios, Joufu's Arc apparently does give +Dexterity. {3*(100-72)+3*(100-72)+3}=171 points in. As in you have to hit Aug 21 before you can get 271% Joufu's Arc and finally get +37 Dexterity. Quite frankly, in a game where certain classes *cough Mjols, Jakaens* frequently run around with well over +50 each to multiple stats, having Joufu's Arc cap at +36 Dexterity(barring Augment 20!) is, if you'll pardon my French, bullshit. Couple that with Convergence of Balance(around +20 Agility, +4 more than that for +hit), and Shadow Cast(+Quickness=Willpower/10), yeah. Then again, the latter 2 are shared with Marauders and Necromancers respectively, both of whom tend to get much better mileage out of them. It could be argued that antei of formation gives 150 Dex, and (the new)hakanai shouten another 100+, but that's some 10 rounds, maximum. Ninjas just don't have much choice beyond that. Stun(which fails a lot in PVP even with +Dex, unless you have AOHS on), or Hurricane/Au-sem-mao, neither of which does particularly grand damage unless you're pracced out the wazoo(and even then, probably miss a crapload in PVP).

Semi-related request: End the blatant bias against Stun. No other impairment gets singled out for immunity. If we're going to have people running around with stun immunity, stun perfection should work as a counter(subtract value of stun perfection from value of stun immunity to get actual % chance to avoid being stunned). Of course, this means AOHS needs to stop giving a flat +100%, but I can live with that if it means people stop yawning when I try to stun them. :P

[Hex]

I do agree with Fenulia, and not just in regard to ninja's. It does seem like a few classes benefit from huge stat buffs, while other are left behind.

[Gideous]

I heard you can get 271% at aug-5.