Focused Feedback: Ninja Revamp

[The Curator]

Ninja

Snap Shot, Aimed Shot, and Fistful of Arrows

• Each of these attacks now grants a 3% chance for henchmen to crit for 30s.
• The chance does not stack from the same power but each power can stack together, for up to +9% chance if all powers are used.

Smoke Flash

• Recharge increased to 90s from 20s
• Duration lowered from 10s to 3s
• No longer requires a target
• Now hides all Ninja Henchmen, providing 100% chance to crit to the squad for 3s.

Kuji-In Zen (now Kuji-In Sha)

• This power now grants Kuji-In Sha (self heal) to all ninjas.
• This power can be slotted with heal sets and enhancements, those will enhance your ninja's passives.
• This power increases ninjas chance to crit by an additional 3% at all times.

Train Ninjas

• This power now grants +defense passives to ninjas.
• This power can now be slotted with defense sets and enhancements, those will enhance your ninja's passives.
• This power increases ninja's chance to crit by an additional 3% at all times.

Henchmen

• All ninjas now have a chance to crit at all times
• This chance starts at 0% but can be increased via upgrades and personal attacks
• Maximum crit chance outside of smoke flash is 15%

[TygerDarkstorm]

Well now, this ought to make the Ninja/Nature MM I have running through Praetoria a whole heck of a lot more interesting to play. I have so many things I want to try out for this new page! 🤣

[TygerDarkstorm]

While I mentioned my Ninja/Nature MM initially, I actually copied my Ninja/Cold MM over to the beta. This character was only level 26 upon port, and slotted with a mix of IO's and SO's. That character had been idling on Dean MacArthur's chain in Sharkhead, so I decided to continue it on beta.

 

The Good:

• Watching the crits fly is great; it wasn't widely known, but ninjas are technically have the highest single target damage, the crits will only add to that.
• Smoke Flash is fun to use now. I had it anyway for shiggles I think, but now I can actually see it truly being effective, especially now that it affects all of the henchmen.
• Train Ninja now puts the genin and jounin into the ninja run stance and gives them stealth, which looks super cool to go with the changes mentioned in the OP.

The Bad:

• Maybe this is just player error, or because I am lacking the second upgrade, but they are still quite squishy in this level range (26-27). I am only playing at +0/x2 and I think I will have to turn the diff back down to +0/x1. I even added freebie IO's to try and help out things like Arctic Fog, Maneuvers and the shields to provide more def/res and I'm still faceplanting on even level content. They only seem to be able to handle one target at a time, so if you as the MM aggro anything more than that, you're the one taking damage, and even in bodyguard mode, I don't have enough ways to shake the mobs, and using Attack my Target breaks bodyguard mode.

I will be interested to see what kind of a difference the final upgrade power makes (currently says Kuji-in Zen on powers tab in beta instead of the new Kuji-in Sha; haven't tried a respec yet, or hit level 28, to see if that name will change on its own to the new one). 

 

I also hope that those with better skill than myself will test these changes and report what kinds of results they get with them.

[Wavicle]

9 minutes ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

While I mentioned my Ninja/Nature MM initially, I actually copied my Ninja/Cold MM over to the beta. This character was only level 26 upon port, and slotted with a mix of IO's and SO's. That character had been idling on Dean MacArthur's chain in Sharkhead, so I decided to continue it on beta.

 

The Good:

• Watching the crits fly is great; it wasn't widely known, but ninjas are technically have the highest single target damage, the crits will only add to that.
• Smoke Flash is fun to use now. I had it anyway for shiggles I think, but now I can actually see it truly being effective, especially now that it affects all of the henchmen.
• Train Ninja now puts the genin and jounin into the ninja run stance and gives them stealth, which looks super cool to go with the changes mentioned in the OP.

The Bad:

• Maybe this is just player error, or because I am lacking the second upgrade, but they are still quite squishy in this level range (26-27). I am only playing at +0/x2 and I think I will have to turn the diff back down to +0/x1. I even added freebie IO's to try and help out things like Arctic Fog, Maneuvers and the shields to provide more def/res and I'm still faceplanting on even level content. They only seem to be able to handle one target at a time, so if you as the MM aggro anything more than that, you're the one taking damage, and even in bodyguard mode, I don't have enough ways to shake the mobs, and using Attack my Target breaks bodyguard mode.

I will be interested to see what kind of a difference the final upgrade power makes (currently says Kuji-in Zen on powers tab in beta instead of the new Kuji-in Sha; haven't tried a respec yet, or hit level 28, to see if that name will change on its own to the new one). 

 

I also hope that those with better skill than myself will test these changes and report what kinds of results they get with them.

 

Have you slotted the upgrade you do have for Defense?

[TygerDarkstorm]

22 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

 

Have you slotted the upgrade you do have for Defense?

Not yet. I need to play around with the slotting some more and maybe respec her. The auto enhance feature is also crap; I did it just to do some fast testing because I need to get some sleep, but it definitely doesn't provide optimal choices. When I have time I'll get in there and swap out those enhancements as well and see if that helps. And hope that others will also test these changes, lol.

[Wavicle]

2 minutes ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

Not yet. I need to play around with the slotting some more and maybe respec her. The auto enhance feature is also crap; I did it just to do some fast testing because I need to get some sleep, but it definitely doesn't provide optimal choices. When I have time I'll get in there and swap out those enhancements as well and see if that helps. And hope that others will also test these changes, lol.

 

Just a tip, the Auto Enhance feature CAN save you a lot of time if you use it and THEN get more specific with your own additions afterward.

You're not wrong that by itself it doesn't make good choices.

[evetsleep]

First...LOVE the Ninja changes.  One thing I noticed is that on live there is a Resistance shield that gives defense to the ninjas (Jounin pictured here from live):
 

 

However on Brainstorm they do not have the Resistance shield in the combat stats, but do have it next to the pet as an icon:

 

 

Is this intentional?  It looks like, based on the combat stats, that Jounin only are getting defense from Hide which means when breaking hide they'll be essentially naked sans-MM buffs like IO's and such.  I did take them for a spin and they don't feel naked, but I'm wondering if it's just a UX thing or do Jounin truly do not have any defense out of hide in the update.

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by evetsleep

[Rand0lk]

Tested Ninja/Dark with a proper build. Well, this is NUTS.

Ninjas literally transformed from a classroom of Cobra Kai nerds in a bunch of ruthless killers under dopamine.

Crits flying everywhere. Fluid and unending stream of attacks. And I feel they're much more durable than before. Wow.

[KC4800]

Copied my Ninja/Time over to Brainstorm, but cannot log in as it says it's the incorrect version, I even re-validated. Not sure how to proceed.

[KaizenSoze]

A little think that I noticed when you upgrade your pets they switch to ninja running stance.

 

A nice visual indication if you upgraded.

[TygerDarkstorm]

21 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

A little think that I noticed when you upgrade your pets they switch to ninja running stance.

 

A nice visual indication if you upgraded.

They do; I noted it in my feedback as well. 🙂 Nice visual indication and it looks cool to boot, lol.

[Dispari]

Ninjas powers and numbers changes that I can see by comparing to City of Data:

Genin: DEF moved to Train
Train: Grants a second (stronger) shuriken power, +11.25% DEF to melee/range, 15% to AoE
Kuji-In Zen: Now gets Exploding Shuriken, now gets Kuji-In Sha (self heal); enhanceable in this power
(Crane Kick still does KB if you were wondering)

Jounin: DEF moved to Train
Train: Grants Soaring Dragon at this level, their Placate is AoE (like players), gets Hide at this level, +15% DEF to melee/range, 30% to AoE (10% AoE seems to suppress if not Hidden)
Kuji-In Zen: Now gets Golden Dragonfly (instead of Head Splitter I guess), now gets Kuji-In Sha (self heal); enhanceable in this power

Oni: DEF moved to Train (still has RES to smash/lethal/fire)
Train: +18.75% DEF to melee/range, 25% to AoE
Kuji-In Zen: Now gets Kuji-In Sha (self heal); enhanceable in this power

Also worth noting but after the first upgrade they chill in Ninja Run mode. Is that new? Wow I haven't played ninjas since like CoV launched.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Dispari

[evetsleep]

On 10/5/2022 at 1:41 PM, evetsleep said:

First...LOVE the Ninja changes.  One thing I noticed is that on live there is a Resistance shield that gives defense to the ninjas (Jounin pictured here from live):
 

 

However on Brainstorm they do not have the Resistance shield in the combat stats, but do have it next to the pet as an icon:

 

 

Is this intentional?  It looks like, based on the combat stats, that Jounin only are getting defense from Hide which means when breaking hide they'll be essentially naked sans-MM buffs like IO's and such.  I did take them for a spin and they don't feel naked, but I'm wondering if it's just a UX thing or do Jounin truly do not have any defense out of hide in the update.

 

 

 

 

I did some more testing and the power that Jounin get (Hide) doesn't suppress during combat like I would have expected (like it does for stalkers).  Assuming that this is by design then I think this can be ignored.

[csr]

It is a bit odd to have it called Hide.

[Sleez916]

Good evening,

 

Did some testing with ninjas by porting my Primary toon, Ninja/Time over to brainstorm.

 

Definitely enjoying the changes thus far.

 

My toon was kitted out as it is on live with IOS and all, and hopped on a small testing team and completed a few missions. One at +1/x8 and a few at +3/x8. Then soloed a mission +3/x8. At no point was there really a struggle, but my toon tends to do alright on live as well.

 

The name of the game is to keep those crit buffs up and let your ninjas go to town. I personally felt a good difference of when those buffs are up vs. when they are down.

 

The changes to being able to buff their defense really allows you to step away from getting extra powers like maneuvers from leadership which to get those attacks.

 

Smoke flash is great to use as a crit buff or and emergency tool from your pets getting wiped (Though I hope your ready to deal with the aggro yourself). That being, with the duration as short as it is, the ninjas will usually only get one attack or two if I’m lucky. Probably how it’s suppose to be, just wish they weren’t sitting there thinking about attacking when they should be attacking.

 

The self heal is a boon that allows my ninjas to care for themselves a little bit more. If they run off and take a hit, it gives me a little more time to get to them if it is still even necessary. It took one of my Genin from 45% to about 95%, could be the same for the others.

 

It did take them a moment to initiate the heal if they are engaged in melee. Had a few times I was yelling at my genin to heal at 30% when he still felt it was more important to stuff his foot down someone’s throat.

 

This won’t save your ninjas life in higher content though, where they outright get one shot by enemies. Defense buff will hopefully help avoid that though. Maybe consider add an absorb or something.

 

All in all, I can say I enjoy the direction this power set has gone, adding a bit of active play and survivability to ninjas (And MM pets as a whole).

[TygerDarkstorm]

Anyone else playing a level 20 (or maybe even lower level) ninja MM and noticing that the henchmen are behaving kind of oddly in combat? Or maybe it's just because I'm doing that Tsoo chain in Steel, but I'm noticing my ninjas behaving rather strangely in combat, even when they're not being hit by things like hurricane. Where like, I have them engage a mob, and they run away all crazy before circling back to attack. I don't remember them behaving this oddly when I tested my level 27 ninja/cold, so I'd figure I'd see if it's WAI or wonky AI behavior.

[Scrapulous]

I'm not a ninjas expert, but I copied my 42 ninjas/storm over and then boosted it to 50+3. I kept the leveling build and just bought attacks and smoke bomb with the final available power picks and stuffed some basic stuff in the new slots. Then I took them into +4/x4 Dark Astoria dailies for parity with how I've tested necro and mercs.

 

First maybe a bug or an oversight: Genin and Oni have Defense Debuff Resistance; Jounin do not. Jounin have two AOE defense buffs from Hide. I assumed that the second one (10%) was intended to be DDR, but maybe Dispari is right and it's intended to be suppressed when attacking? In any case, my Jounin have more than 70% def to AoE, so I guess they're safe as houses when it comes to fireballs.

 

They're pretty durable. Their heals are on a 45 second recharge timer, which feels very long when they're on low health. But my Oni is at the positional def softcaps with just two Def IOs in the first upgrade, Maneuvers, Steamy mist, and the MM aura IOs. Most teams will casually push the Genin to softcap (mine are at 36%).

 

This janky leveling build performed about the same as my finished, price-is-no-object endgame proc offense necro build did. I think there's a lot of room for improvement - I have no procs in Jounin, for instance. I plan to return to this tomorrow, plan an actual ground-up build with beta changes in mind, and do a respec and retest. Right now I think Ninjas look like serious threats for a top-3 spot in MM rankings, (though I haven't tested Bots yet and hear some impressive things). They do quite good damage and depending on your secondary they're very sturdy. My guess is that Elec, Nature, and maybe Thermal will be the big winners for Ninja secondaries as things stand now.

 

Edited to add: I think 3 seconds might not be enough on Smoke Flash. I get that you don't want them grinding out a bunch of crits all at once, but as it stands sometimes you use the power and none of them are in position and it's mostly wasted, which feels pretty bad.

Edited October 8, 2022 by Scrapulous

[csr]

5 hours ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

Anyone else playing a level 20 (or maybe even lower level) ninja MM and noticing that the henchmen are behaving kind of oddly in combat? Or maybe it's just because I'm doing that Tsoo chain in Steel, but I'm noticing my ninjas behaving rather strangely in combat, even when they're not being hit by things like hurricane. Where like, I have them engage a mob, and they run away all crazy before circling back to attack. I don't remember them behaving this oddly when I tested my level 27 ninja/cold, so I'd figure I'd see if it's WAI or wonky AI behavior.

 

I had the same thing doing Wheel of Destruction on my Necro MM.  Some Tsoo (level 15-22 Serpent Enforcers, for example) throw Caltrops, which cause that sort of behavior.

[Dispari]

Caltrops, monkey gas, molotov fire patches, and other area patches will cause pets to panic and scatter. Unfortunately they ignore commands and prioritize fleeing for a couple seconds when this happens.

This isn't a problem unique to ninja or even MMs because all pets will do this. Though as a mastermind I do wish you could command them to stand still by saying "No seriously, there's no need to run half way across the zone because you took 1 damage."

It's particularly bad for ninjas because they have a high movement speed buff AND tend to close into melee. So they will scatter at high speeds, then run back for an attack, and scatter again.

[evetsleep]

3 hours ago, Dispari said:

Caltrops, monkey gas, molotov fire patches, and other area patches will cause pets to panic and scatter. Unfortunately they ignore commands and prioritize fleeing for a couple seconds when this happens.

This isn't a problem unique to ninja or even MMs because all pets will do this. Though as a mastermind I do wish you could command them to stand still by saying "No seriously, there's no need to run half way across the zone because you took 1 damage."

It's particularly bad for ninjas because they have a high movement speed buff AND tend to close into melee. So they will scatter at high speeds, then run back for an attack, and scatter again.

Pretty sure if you command them to stay before the patch happens they'll happily stand in it.  That works for ranged pets of course, but melee pets not so much.

 

For a good time and party trick speed boost zombies and then get them in a patch.  It's hilarious if it wasn't maddening at the same time (they are zombies after all and should not experience fear or pain).

[TygerDarkstorm]

As noted though, they were performing this behavior without those types of flee patches; had I thought it was something like that I wouldn't have commented since I know those have a fear effect. Only effect kind of like that being used was hurricane, but they behaved in this manner regardless of it running or not.

 

Further, they were doing it as part of their normal attacks, that why I asked specifically about a lower level range, because some of the behavior seemed to be them repositioning to use their ranged attacks instead of prioritizing their melee attacks. I didn't have this issue on my MM that has both upgrades, that I can recall.

[Dispari]

4 minutes ago, evetsleep said:

Pretty sure if you command them to stay before the patch happens they'll happily stand in it.  That works for ranged pets of course, but melee pets not so much.

Let's try actually!

I'll take my ninjas into a custom AE "oops all monkeys" map and command them to "goto" and "stay" to see which one works.

Telling pets to "goto" a location and then some patches spawn, they flee.
Telling pets to "stay" at a location and then some patches spawn, they DO stay where they are, so you're right!

So you do have to really be on the ball and make your pets move around and THEN command them to stay. So red light green light, but it does work. Ninjas recently got some extra ranged attacks so it's not AS terrible to have them standing there not using their melee powers, but it's better than the alternative.

Though... I noticed that when you set them back to follow they have a panic attack and bolt as if they were in a patch (even long after the patches are gone).

[TygerDarkstorm]

6 hours ago, Dispari said:

Though... I noticed that when you set them back to follow they have a panic attack and bolt as if they were in a patch (even long after the patches are gone).

Hm, I wonder if this is related to the weird behavior I was seeing. I was shifting some between go-to, follow, and attack my target to try and keep them reined in. If I knew how to record my screen, I'd try to make a video of what I'm seeing to see if it's me, WAI, or something else.

[KaizenSoze]

43 minutes ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

Hm, I wonder if this is related to the weird behavior I was seeing. I was shifting some between go-to, follow, and attack my target to try and keep them reined in. If I knew how to record my screen, I'd try to make a video of what I'm seeing to see if it's me, WAI, or something else.

You can use OBS studio. It free and easy to use, then upload the videos to your youtube account.

 

https://obsproject.com/

[Scrapulous]

Here's the before-and-after of defenses for Ninjas:

 

Live:

Genin:

• Defense: +6% to Melee, Ranged, and AoE
• Confuse Resistance: 33%
• Confuse Protection: 2
• Run Speed: +7.16mph

Jounin:

• Defense: +13% to Melee, Ranged, and AoE
• Confuse Resistance: 33%
• Confuse Protection: 4
• Run Speed: +7.16mph

Oni:

• Defense: +6% to Melee, Ranged, and AoE
• Resistance: Smashing & Lethal: 25%, Fire: 50%
• Confuse Resistance: 33%
• Confuse Protection: 4
• Run Speed: +7.16mph

This is all inherent on Live.

 

Beta:

 

Genin:

• Inherent:
  • Confuse Resistance: 33%
  • Confuse Protection: 2
  • Run Speed: +9.45mph
  • Stealth Radius: +54ft (Note: this does not appear on combat attributes, and is either a typo or is bugged)
• Train Ninjas Upgrade:
  • Defense: +11.25% to Melee and Ranged; +15% to AoE
  • Debuff Resist: +12.97% defense
• Kuji-in Zen Upgrade:
  • Kuji-in Sha: 25% heal, 45s recharge

Jounin:

• Inherent:
  • Confuse Resistance: 33%
  • Confuse Protection: 4
  • Run Speed: +9.45mph
• Train Ninjas Upgrade:
  • Defense: +15% to Melee and Ranged; +20% to AoE; +10% to AoE (no typo)
  • Debuff Resist: none
• Kuji-in Zen Upgrade:
  • Kuji-in Sha: 25% heal, 45s recharge

 

Oni:

• Inherent:
  • Resistance: Smashing & Lethal: 26%; Fire: 52%
  • Confuse Resistance: 33%
  • Confuse Protection: 4
  • Run Speed: +7.16mph
• Train Ninjas Upgrade:
  • Defense: +18.75% to Melee and Ranged; +25% to AoE
  • Debuff Resist: +21.63% defense
• Kuji-in Zen Upgrade:
  • Kuji-in Sha: 25% heal, 45s recharge

 

Anecdotally, if ninjas die during a hard fight and you try to bring them back, it can be murderously difficult to get them summoned and buffed before they get killed, because the animation time on the summon is so long that they can easily drop if they have no defenses.

 

It's a little weird that the humans got runspeed buffs but the demon didn't. Demons bad at running I guess. I don't like that the pets have differing speeds.

 

Stealth radius on Genin is a nice thought, except it doesn't actually happen. And it would be a little weird if they were always stealthy and the Jounin not stealthy until the first upgrade... although it's a difference of the first five levels, so not very meaningful in actual play.