page 3 [FOCUSED FEEDBACK] Ninjitsu Adjustments

[The Curator]

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Ninjitsu

• Quote

  Design Notes
  With these changes we are looking to introduce some closer parity between the stalker version of the set and the Sentinel/Scrapper version of the set. We are seeking to still retain most the functionality of the Stalker version by merging Smoke Flash and Blinding Powder into a single power and offering Caltrops as a mutually exclusive Ninja tool. To make Caltrops a somewhat more enticing option, it's being given an additional unenhanceable -To Hit and -DMG debuff. This opens the room to bring two powers from the Sentinel/Scrapper version to Stalkers: Bo Ryaku and Seishinteki Kyoyo.

   

  As we do this, we are also adjusting the recharge for Seishinteki Kyoyo. This power was originally made rather similar to powers like Power Sink, without any of the drawbacks of having an alerted foe in range or even an endurance cost. This is considered to be a bit too much for no cost other than recharge, we are looking to retain the functionality but changing it to be delivered over time.

  Expand  

• Blinding Powder [Sentinels]
  • Power now also applies a placate effect on targets (requires a tohit roll).
  • Recharge reduced from 120s to 60s
  • Endurance cost increased from 7.8 to 8.528
  • Arc increased from 40 degrees to 90.
  • Range increased from 25ft to 40ft.
  • Power now takes Taunt enhancements and sets.
  • Power now takes Sleep enhancements and sets.
  • Power now checks for Psionic defense in addition to AoE defense.
  • This effectively merges Smoke Flash and Blinding Powder into a single power.
• Blinding Powder [Stalkers/Scrapprers]
  • Renamed Smoke Flash.
  • Power now also applies a placate effect on targets (requires a tohit roll).
  • Endurance cost increased from 7.8 to 8.528
  • Changed from a foe targeted cone to a PBAoE with a 25ft radius.
  • Cast time increased from 1.07s to 1.83s
  • Animation and description changed to match the changes.
  • Power now takes Taunt enhancements and sets.
  • Power now takes Sleep enhancements and sets.
  • Power now checks for Psionic defense in addition to AoE defense.
  • This effectively merges Smoke Flash and Blinding Powder into a single power.
• Smoke Flash [Stalkers]
  • This power is being replaced with Bo Ryaku.
  • If you had this power in your build, it will be replaced with Bo Ryaku next time you log in.
  • All slotted enhancements and sets will still be in the power but you might want to change some of them.
• Seishinteki Kyoyo
  • Recharge increased from 60s to 90s.
  • +Endurance now delivered over 30s
  • Now grants +30% resistance to -End for 30s
• Shinobi-Iri [Sentinels]
  • Now grants a +30% chance for critical opportunity hit.
  • No longer grants a damage buff while stealthed.
• Bo Ryaku
  • This power is now available to Stalkers at level 24.
• Kuji-In Retsu
  • (PvE only) Endurance cost increased from 2.6 to 10.4.
  • (PvE only) Recharge reduced to 300s.
  • (PvE only) Duration reduced to 30s.
  • (PvE only) No longer crashes.
  • (PvE only) Defense buff lowered from scale 6 to scale 3.
  • Power now takes Heal enhancements and sets.
  • Using this power now recharges all Ninjitsu powers except Kuji-In Retsu
  • (PvE only) Now grants a 40% absorb buff for 30s.
  • (PvE only) Now grants mez protection for its duration.
  • (PvP only) Now grants a 20% absorb buff for 15s.
  • (PvP only) Now grants mez resistance for its duration.

[ScarySai]

8 hours ago, The Curator said:

As we do this, we are also adjusting the recharge for Seishinteki Kyoyo. This power was originally made rather similar to powers like Power Sink, without any of the drawbacks of having an alerted foe in range or even an endurance cost. This is considered to be a bit too much for no cost other than recharge, we are looking to retain the functionality but changing it to be delivered over time.

 

Compared to what powersink, consume and dp are capable of, I'm really not seeing the necessity of this change. Other stuff looks fine.

[Maelwys]

10 hours ago, The Curator said:

• Shinobi-Iri [Sentinels]
  • Now grants a +30% chance for critical opportunity hit.
  • No longer grants a damage buff while stealthed.

Restating my main point from CB:

Changing Sentinel Shinobi-Iri from +40% Dmg to +30% CritChance is a VERY BAD DEAL for them

Scrapper and Stalker crits inflict 100% damage but Sentinel crits only inflict 40% damage.

This makes it a bad deal before you even consider that currently Sentinel Shinobi-Iri's best use case is to buff up their Nukes as a big opening AoE attack...

Shinobi-Iri is an offensive buff which requires you to be "stealthed" and out of combat for at least 8 seconds before it'll kick in.
This proposed revision is a straight nerf to Nuke damage; and even for non-nuke attacks best case you'll only have a 70% chance of a crit. Which means that quite often a /NIN Sentinel will be spending 8 seconds entering into a hidden state for absolutely bugger all gain.

Currently on Live; Shinobi-Iri is granting ~88 damage to my Sentinel's Nukes.
 

Unbuffed Sentinel Nuke (BR "Overcharge") with Shinobi-Iri on Live:
79.46 Energy
192.94 Energy
4x 8.55 Energy
= 306.60 total

Unbuffed Sentinel Nuke (BR "Overcharge") with Shinobi-Iri on Test:

56.75 Energy
137.81 Energy
4x 6.10 Energy
= 218.96 total
= 218.96 total (-87.64 damage)

Even with a damage-aspect-capped-and-procced-out Nuke; ~90 additional damage is still a very non-negligible amount.

The proposed replacement, +30% Crit Chance (even when it's working!) for Sentinels equates to an additional 0.3*0.4=12% damage boost on average. Which although it'll be affected by damage boosts (like enhancements), doesn't apply to Nukes. Which means that the most usage I can conceivably get out of Shinobi-Iri now is to buff a regular AoE attack... however those pale in comparison to Nukes. Taking my BR/Nin as an example: 'Refractor Beam' deals 50.0555 base damage; so even at the damage cap (+400%) that's only 250.2775 damage. 250.2775*0.12=30.0333 damage; or about a third of what I'm currently getting out of Shinobi-Iri on Live. That is very poor by comparison.

And to make matters worse; it's very inconsistent. Shinobi-Iri takes 8 seconds of "stealthing" before its buff kicks in.
If you only have a 30% chance of it actually doing anything; then 70% of the time you'll be spending those 8 seconds to get zero benefit.

So again: PLEASE revert the Shinobi-Iri change on Sentinels or amend their Nukes so that its buff (and/or +CritChance in general) does something useful for them. 
Or at least make it a GUARANTEED crit, so going Stealth > Aim > AoE > Nuke (instead of Stealth > Aim > Nuke > AoE) wouldn't be quite as much of a damage loss.
 

Edited Saturday at 09:34 AM by Maelwys

[BrandX]

Will Kuji-In Retsu off Ninjitsu a bit of DDR or just added defense?

[FupDup]

As somebody who previously asked for Sentinel Shinobi to be crits instead of a % damage buff...I'm sorry. I assumed that Sent crits would also apply to the nuke in some capacity, and was more fixated on the ability to go over the damage cap since % buffs can be capped out by teammates/insps. If nukes aren't gonna crit, I'm gonna have to do a hypocritical 180 and sheepishly ask for a reversion on that power since the potential benefit (crit nukes) doesn't appear to be coming. As it is, you'd have to open up a fight with a filler AOE before the nuke to actually use this. 

Edited Saturday at 03:34 PM by FupDup

[Night]

[Apologies for cross-posting, I was told that's the best way to give feedback specifically to the relevant T9s while there's no Focused Feedback thread specifically for those changes]

 

TLDR: The way those T9s are presented are a massive nerf to what an armor T9 offers and the lowered recharge is not worth the massively reduced scaling and duration, cutting down a power's duration to 1/4th and sometimes 1/6th of its current duration, and the quadrupled activation cost. Those are not worthwhile tradeoffs for what we have now and a huge departure from what those T9 armor powers offer currently.

 

Reduced scaling means you'll be hit more often and harder when going up against anything at a higher difficulty or against any enemy group with ToHit buffs, meanwhile right now Elude/Overload/Kuji-In Retsu softcaps you all on its own and it's very useful if you wanna survive an encounter, activate it when getting up with a wakie or a rez and get right into the fights, or if you run out of endurance and don't wanna die from all your toggles dropping. 30 seconds is also not long in a fight and when you activate a godmode you wanna feel powerful and survive whatever bad situation forced you to pop it in the first place.

 

 

I think that defense/resistance-oriented T9s should still keep their current scaling, putting you at defense softcap out of the box is what they do now and lowering that would only be an unwanted nerf. It's also useful in situations when you're just getting up with a wakie, or running out of endurance and needing to get your defenses back instantly so you don't get defeated, or getting attacked by an ambush or a giant monster (particularly during a zone event) and activating that so that you can get right into the action and ignore your actual defensive toggles for the moment. That's also an argument for keeping the endurance cost low as quadrupling it only removes its use as a panic button.

 

Level difference between you and the enemy and their rank will still affect their accuracy to a significant degree even if it's an accuracy modifier instead of ToHit one, there's usually many consecutive attacks swinging at you every few seconds and that builds up. Also big number is nicer than small number.

 

 

Using Moment of Glory as a blueprint for godmodes is also misguided. Moment of Glory started out as a clicky that maxed out your defense and resistance (to all but psi, and probably toxic) for a few minutes but it set your health to 25% and prevented you from healing in any way (aside from increasing your max health number via Dull Pain). The way the power worked was changed because preventing yourself from regenerating health went against the idea of Regeneration as a whole. It was also a death sentence when fighting Psychic Clockwork or Carnies.

 

That way the new (current) Moment of Glory was also changed was so that you would be able to survive a mob's alpha strike, the initial mass of attacks a big group hits you with when you first charge in, before the rest of the team could join you to help you or so that enemy attacks stagger out instead of hitting all at once, allowing for the bulk of the set, its passive regeneration and clicky heals, to keep you alive. 

 

 

Since Moment of Glory seems to be the main inspiration for these changes, we must look at what Regeneration as a set was, from the wiki:

"This set has been in the game for Scrappers since Issue 0."

"This set was included with the original release of Stalkers in Issue 6."

"This set was proliferated to Brutes in Issue 21."

 

For the massive bulk of the game's lifespan, Regeneration was not a set designed to be the sole tank of a team and with its many, many nerfs, only recently was Regeneration given a long-deserved glow-up. This kinda design does not apply to every other armor set.

 

That and low-duration buff powers provide a massive benefit, so instead of nerfing their scaling, they should be heavily buffed to make you actually unkillable for this heavily reduced duration. Even now Moment of Glory offers ~70% defense and resistance values.

 

 

 

There are three main suggestions I propose for those suggested T9s:

 

1. Make them into a mutually-exclusive option to the current existing T9s that retain their current existing scaling, features, cost, and their current existing durations without any changes.

 

2. Make them into a mutually-exclusive option to the current existing T9s that retain their current existing scaling, features, cost, and their current existing durations while also adding minor buffs to the current existing T9s, such as simply removing the crash and reducing their recharge times while still being fully enhanceable, and changing nothing else, no nerfs.

 

3. Try out the idea of applying a form of adaptable recharge into the T9s and turn them into Incarnate Hybrid-style toggles that have a maximum duration (2 minutes and 3 minutes depending on T9, as they have now) but can be detoggled early for reduced recharge time. So that each second of use adds one second of recharge time. Meaning that if you toggle a T9 for 30 seconds, it goes on a 30 second cooldown, but you can also toggle it for its full duration of 2 minutes or 3 minutes depending on the T9, with their full current scaling and all current benefits, and afterwards let it go on a 2 and 3 minute recharge respectively. It could be adjusted so that the power has a base recharge of ~30s onto which use-time is added, so that if you use the T9 for 10 seconds, the recharge time is 40 seconds, and so on, but that's for later.

 

Personally I like option 2 since it's a simple buff to the powers' functions and covers the goals of the changes without turning them into completely different powers. At the very least those suggested T9s should be added as a mutually exclusive option to choose between that and the current T9s and not be forced into these suggested versions as they deviate so much from their current originals that they do not cover the same bases anymore.

[Mezmera]

I want to like that instant recharge of Ninjitsu powers ability, I'm just not sure how handy it actually is.  On my Ninjitsu stalker for the heal I put a good set in it so that it recharges real well.  That leaves Caltrops and Smoke Flash to be affected most by this change.  There's 3 powers I skip on my Nin stalker, Caltrops, Smoke Bomb (I'd rather have the actual placate power), and Blinding Powder. 

 

Are Caltrops and Smoke Flash going to be so good now that I'll want to double up on them in the area at times?  Not sure I'm sold on the instant recharge, the absorb will be nice sure, but a 30s duration will be annoying to manage especially if there's no real benefit to instant recharging any of those Ninjitsu powers.  

[Wavicle]

There is a typo in the description for Retsu: "crowd ccontrol"

[Frosticus]

14 hours ago, Mezmera said:

I want to like that instant recharge of Ninjitsu powers ability, I'm just not sure how handy it actually is.  On my Ninjitsu stalker for the heal I put a good set in it so that it recharges real well.  That leaves Caltrops and Smoke Flash to be affected most by this change.  There's 3 powers I skip on my Nin stalker, Caltrops, Smoke Bomb (I'd rather have the actual placate power), and Blinding Powder. 

 

Are Caltrops and Smoke Flash going to be so good now that I'll want to double up on them in the area at times?  Not sure I'm sold on the instant recharge, the absorb will be nice sure, but a 30s duration will be annoying to manage especially if there's no real benefit to instant recharging any of those Ninjitsu powers.  

I brought up the same thing in CB.

 

If I just hit retsu why would I "need" any of my ninja powers? This is my window of opportunity to go full offense, so I won't be using additional mitigation tools.

 

Instant recharge is an "oh shiny" feature further compounded by the fact none of the ninja powers (other than retsu) have long recharge periods to begin with.

[Wavicle]

11 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

I brought up the same thing in CB.

 

If I just hit retsu why would I "need" any of my ninja powers? This is my window of opportunity to go full offense, so I won't be using additional mitigation tools.

 

Instant recharge is an "oh shiny" feature further compounded by the fact none of the ninja powers (other than retsu) have long recharge periods to begin with.

You’re not wrong. Probably the best case scenario, worst case scenario, depending on your perspective, is to have healed yourself, but you’re still taking damage, so you hit Retsu and then you can heal yourself again just in case.

[Frosticus]

Retsu doesn't need the +def or ddr now that it has absorb and insta recharge. Its redundant.

[drbuzzard]

Now if they just had a toggle status protection option...

[Uun]

Tested on my Psi/Nin sentinel. +3/x6 tips missions vs. Longbow and CoT (+1 lvl shift). 

• Don't have Blinding Powder or Kuji-In Retsu in my build and see little reason to respec to add these. Defense is already soft-capped to all vectors (and is now higher due to change to sentinel res/def modifiers).
• Changes to Seishinteki Kyoyo are fine. I use the power pretty infrequently and the end drain protection is a nice add. [Can we get end drain added to the Debuff Resistance panel in Combat Attributes? Recovery Resistance is listed, but it doesn't include end drain resistance.]
• Undecided on the change to Shinobi-Iri. 40% damage buff while stealthed was good for T9s, but the 30% critical chance applies to all combat (you don't have to be stealthed to get a critical). Not sure if the 30% critical chance is coded to ignore T9s, but I tried it numerous times and never saw the T9 crit.  [Patch note for Opportunity states that nukes aren't intended to crit.] Otherwise, I saw "Critical" messages flying all over the place in combat. Also, I feel like my nuke was killing just about everything except bosses even without the extra 40% dmg buff.

 

EDIT:  Just noticed that in addition to the 30% critical chance from Shinobi-Iri, there's now a 5%-40% critical chance from Opportunity (depending on meter). Are these additive? If I've got a full Opportunity meter do I have a 70% critical chance? 

 

Edited Sunday at 11:19 PM by Uun
Additional Info

[Maelwys]

8 hours ago, Uun said:

Undecided on the change to Shinobi-Iri. 40% damage buff while stealthed was good for T9s, but the 30% critical chance applies to all combat (you don't have to be stealthed to get a critical). 

...

EDIT:  Just noticed that in addition to the 30% critical chance from Shinobi-Iri, there's now a 5%-40% critical chance from Opportunity (depending on meter). Are these additive? If I've got a full Opportunity meter do I have a 70% critical chance? 

 

My testing showed that Shinobi-Iri requires the usual eight second break in combat to re-enter stealth, and it's being stealthed that grants a single +30% Crit chance boost that wears off as soon as you re-enter combat.

 

It does appear to be additive with the inherent Crit boost from opportunity, so you can have anything from 5% (no opportunity) to 40% (full opportunity) plus the 30% from stealth.

 

The sucky bit is that Sentinel Shinobi-Iri's buff has become far more unreliable (30% chance of increasing your damage rather than 100%) and its buff no longer applies to Nukes (which was the typical use case for it). So it's objectively worse now by every metric.

Scrapper Shinobi-Iri isn't quite as bad since their Crits inflict +100% attack damage instead of Sentinel's +40% attack damage. And they don't get Nukes.

 

Edited yesterday at 08:07 AM by Maelwys

[Uun]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

My testing showed that Shinobi-Iri requires the usual eight second break in combat to re-enter stealth, and it's being stealthed that grants a single +30% Crit chance boost that wears off as soon as you re-enter combat.

If that’s the case then this change is a massive nerf. I could live with an always on 30% crit chance, but one that only works when stealthed is garbage. This should work like blaster Shinobi.

[Maelwys]

17 minutes ago, Uun said:

If that’s the case then this change is a massive nerf. I could live with an always on 30% crit chance, but one that only works when stealthed is garbage. This should work like blaster Shinobi.

"Like Blaster Shinobi" is similar to the way it works on Live - granting a +40% damage buff (Sentinels) and a +25% damage buff (Blasters) on your first attack out of stealth.
However the Blaster version also gains a separate Lethal proc (with a flat 20% activation chance, not PPM) on all their attacks (not just from stealth)

The Sentinel version on Test now seems to be modelled after the Scrapper version, which grants their AoE attacks +30% chance to Crit and ST attacks +65% chance to Crit.
Unfortunately since Sentinels only deal 40% damage with their Crits compared to Scrappers 100%; this is a very bad deal for Sentinels even on their AoEs.
In practice on my BR/Nin Sentinel it's about ~90 less damage on their Nukes in return for a 30% chance to deal ~48 more damage on a non-Nuke AoE (averages to ~14.5).
 

Edited yesterday at 01:23 PM by Maelwys

[aethereal]

5 hours ago, Maelwys said:

The sucky bit is that Sentinel Shinobi-Iri's buff has become far more unreliable (30% chance of increasing your damage rather than 100%) and its buff no longer applies to Nukes (which was the typical use case for it). So it's objectively worse now by every metric.

 

It's not objectively worse by every metric since (I assume?) sentinel crits work like other crits and are enhanceable.

 

If you have a 100 base damage power + 100% damage slotting, then:

 

Old Shinobi-Iri:

 

100 damage * (2 + 0.4) = 240 damage

 

New Shinobi-Iri if it crits:

 

(100 damage base +40 damage crit) * 2 = 280 damage

 

So the highs are higher.  But of course as you say, only 30% chance, so you have to say 100% chance of 40 damage vs 30% chance of 80 damage, lower damage in expectation.  Overall a nerf, just not in every possible way.  It would break even in terms of expected value at +50% crit chance.

 

(If you hit Aim + Gaussian Build Up before shooting, so you have 200% total damage bonus, again for simplicity with a 100 base damage power, then a crit looks like:

 

(100 + 40) * 3 = 420 damage

 

You now have done 120 damage with your crit, it's still barely less damage in expectation than the old +40% damage bonus.)

Edited yesterday at 01:45 PM by aethereal

[Maelwys]

44 minutes ago, aethereal said:

so you have to say 100% chance of 40 damage vs 30% chance of 80 damage, lower damage in expectation.  Overall a nerf, just not in every possible way.  It would break even in terms of expected value at +50% crit chance.

(i) At present for a like-for-like attack it's adding lower average damage until your damage is being buffed by +233.33 damage or more.

Live: Any 100 damage attack gets 40%*100=40 additional damage all the time.
Test: An ED-capped 100 damage attack gets 0.4(100*1.955)=78.2 additional damage 30% of the time. Which is an average of 0.3*78.2=23.46 additional damage.
Test: A damage-capped 100 damage attack gets 0.4(100*5)=200 additional damage 30% of the time. Which is an average of 0.3*200=60 additional damage.
Test: With a +233.33% damage boost a 100 damage attack gets 0.4(100*3.33333) = 133.333 damage 30% of the time. For an average of 0.3*133.333= 40.00 additional damage.


(ii) At present it's not applying against Nukes; so you have to use it on something else, such as an AoE instead.

Live: Unbuffed Sentinel "Overcharge" with Shinobi-Iri = 306.60 
Test: Unbuffed Sentinel "Overcharge" with Shinobi-Iri = 218.96 (a loss of -87.64 damage)

Enhanced 'Refractor Beam' = (50.0555*1.95) = 97.61 damage
Test: Enhanced 'Refractor Beam' with Shinobi-Iri = 1.4(50.0555*1.95) = 136.65 damage (+39.04). @30% chance that's an average gain of +11.712 damage
Damage-Capped 'Refractor Beam' = (50.0555*5) = 250.28 damage
Test: Damage-Capped 'Refractor Beam' with Shinobi-Iri = 1.4(50.0555*5) = 350.39 damage (+100.1) @30% chance that's an average gain of +30.03 damage



So if you currently use Shinobi-Iri to boost one single big non-Nuke attack? It's worse.
And if you currently use Shinobi-Iri to boost a Nuke? It's way worse.
And if you currently use Shinobi-Iri to boost a Nuke and are prepared to adapt your playstyle to cope with the change by swapping to an AoE? It's still worse.

Sure... sometimes it isn't worse on the occasions that you get lucky and actually happen to crit.
But spending ~8s re-entering Stealth to now only have a 70% chance of bugger all gain? Yeah, worse.

We can debate the exactitudes of the semantics all day; but realistically I'm not seeing a bright side unless you're Fulcrum Shifted and intentionally using non-Nuke attacks.
 

Edited yesterday at 02:22 PM by Maelwys

[aethereal]

I agree that it's overall a substantial nerf.

[Captain Powerhouse]

Note on the Crashing T9 power changes:

 

We have decided to roll these changes back. At least at this point there are no plans to revisit them in the future. That of course might always be subject to change.

 

Due to the holiday break, not sure when the rollback will be hitting the open beta server, so if anyone still wants to play around with the current versions for any reason you might have a few days to do so.

 

We are and will continue to monitor feedback through these threads for other changes and address fixes and/or iterate as we can. Do note nothing is considered final until it reaches release candidate status.