Blade: YuFollow

This is our new Weaponskill. I was really excited to see how it fairs against the standard Blade: Jin. First weaponskill with my current WS gear gave me 240 damage on an IT in Abyssea (thats where i actually got the WS). I was not happy to say the least. Giving SE the benefit of a doubt i went out to test it on some Too Weak Goblin digger and to my surprise: 240 damage. Ok this certainly looks like a pure magic Weaponskill. Same damage ignoring defense thats interesting if the modifiers are good.

After doing some tests with INT gear i saw a jump in damage but i don't usually carry much INT gear except some all job rings and the Moldy earring. I went up to 258 damage.

Now, on Wiki people seem to have already figured out how it works and this is what really is making me think ~ What does SE want the job to be?

1. New WS is 50% DEX/INT modifier thats high but good luck finding equipment with both. Of the top of my head only Usu body comes to mind (STR +8 DEX +8 INT +8).

2. Magic Attack Bonus affects weapon skill damage. Damage calculates as 2.4 Damage per Magic Attack Bonus point on equipment. Do we even have gear part from Moldy earring that has MAB?

3. Damage can be affected by Water Day/Weather. SCH helping us with damage? Use Elemental Obi for WS on day/weather?

2. We get the new JA for double Elemental Damge.

3. We get Magic Burst Bonus at 80.

Where is SE going with this? They suddenly want us to be Mages or what is the reasoning for this?

I am interested to hear what you all think and let's try to find the best armor set for Blade: Yu, just for fun.

KJ

PS: Forgot to add that you better not use this WS in an alliance poisoning a mob that might have to be slept.


Edited, Jun 29th 2010 4:51am by KindjalFerrer

Makes me wonder how high you can push the damage, id find a few uses for a magic based ws if the damage was decent...
BUT I wonder what their @#%^ing problem is with NIN, is it really that hard to make a decent update for it? Where are Jubako, Dokumori and Monomi NI ? if they are giving us magic stuff why not finish what we already have first?

I've been wondering if they wanted us to be some sort of melee/ranged/magic hybrid job for a while now.

I'm sure the build you make for this WS will be something that you can actually use for Blade: Ei too. The only reason I was ever thinking about Blade: Ei is because it was an Utsusemi/Blink penetrator and also served as a pure magic weaponskill. I was considering it's use more than Blade: Yu due to the fact that you'd get weather bonuses in WoE/Dynamis/Apollyon (Double Darkness) and can ensure that an Anrin Obi is used on WS to take advantage of this fact. Innin has a crit/accuracy booster on melee/ranged when used behind the enemy, but it also gives a boost to magic damage output. I'd want to use either Blade: Ei or Blade: Yu under the effect of Innin to get the 30% (decaying) magic damage increase, we just need to find a way to boost the base.

The first thing I can think of immediately would be the creation of two +MAB Kunias for dual wield use. The level 80 versions (which honestly don't look too hard to make) look as if they give +8 MAB and +6 INT each and would probably give a slight boost to elemental ninjitsu output as a side benefit (especially with Innin, Futae, and Magic Burst Boost at 80).

There's +12 INT and +16 MAB on your weapons alone. You can probably wear Osode on WS (because you're not going to miss) for an additional +10 DEX and +10 INT. You'd have to figure out whether Haidate (+15 DEX) or the Denali Legs (+3 MAB) would serve you better. You could probably make Uggalepih Pendant (+8 MAB @ MP < 50%) and Moldavite Earring (+5 MAB) and Novio Earring (+7 MAB) fit into the WS gearswap.

We can sub BLM (pre-80) or RDM (At 80NIN/40RDM) for MAB II (+24 MAB) if we're really going to go hardcore into this.



If we can make the damage at least in the 750 range (like a good Atonement), it may be something that NIN might be able to capitalize on in areas where we've suddenly found ourselves fighting physically resistant enemies. I know there are ways of making pure elemental weaponskills work and NIN is one of the few jobs that can actually capitalize on them. I'm basing the 30% (decating) magic damage increase on Innin with the fact that Elemental Magic, Ninjitsu, and even Mijin Gakure are boosted by it's use. If NIN can drop mini-nukes with TP and does not have to worry about MP it may find a new strength on enemies that swap resistances in the future.

Elemental Magic Test - Innin
Pre-Futae Raiton: San nuke on chaff enemy

We've seen screenshots of COR and BST (1000+ DMG using Primal Rend on Kirin) using their pure elemental WS on enemies (Although I think the BST formula might be a little different with Primal Rend since it uses CHR). Ninjas can usually build TP faster and have a stance that actually aids in the use of these magic based weaponskills as well as giving them the accuracy that they may need in order to generate TP.

Here's a screenshot of an elemental WS on Behemoth, if NIN can build TP faster and WS faster it's possible that it might be able to swap to a mini-nuking role using elemental weaponskills instead of physical ones like Blade: Jin. You can't really discount weaponskills like Blade: To either, but I'm assuming Blade: Yu would do better for us than Blade: Teki because the mods are weighted heavier.

Leaden Salute Test - Behemoth



This could make for some nice weaponskills, or may serve to only make mediocre ones. At a minimum, if elemental weaponskills are just not boosted enough we've at least got a start on a setup that can be used for elemental ninjitsu.

I've been thinking of the future of my NIN for a while now, and while I was expecting to go dual-wield / haste katana blender-style, the more I think about, the more I feel like the magey /RDM is the new direction I should take it.

It may be because I already have DNC80 (capped xp now, yay) for all my hundred-stabs need, but I'm looking at NIN more as a melee/magic hybrid these days.

Since I already have COR48, I've been contemplating the idea of NIN/COR with futae + San nukes and quick draw shots. Quick draw is MAB based, so with Innin, it could be interesting to see the kind of damage you can do in the long run on kited fights (thinking to bring Nin/Cor to help against lolgenbu, for example)

I'm just wondering how the quick draw damage will compensate for the lack of /RDM's +MAB.

I just wanted to quick state about the direction of NIN. It is clear that SE wants to make NIN a front-line enfeebler the same way DNC is a front-line healer. We now have access to para/slow/blind/att down/poison2 WS and acc down WS. And this is only at lvl 80 with 19 more lvls to go. Add in the ninjutsu bonus and I think SE wants us to start subbing blm or rdm and stop tanking. There in lies the problem, players will always expect NIN to tank so its gonna take some good players and some more JA's/spells to start breaking that mold.

Edited, Jun 29th 2010 4:59pm by Whirbomb

Which are all important things to a Dual Wielding front liner that already can tank amazingly. You would'nt want your enfeebling DD shooting blanks.

It looks like SE always have good ideas and terrible realisation for Ninja. A purely magical WS is actually a good idea. It's an asset on high defense mobs (HNM-like mobs) because it provides steady damage.
However when this idea is applied to Ninja, it's changed to make it suck.

Let's compare Yu to recent magical WS:
Primal rend (bst), Leaden Salute (Cor) and Trueflight (Rng) all work this way:
- magical ws using a non-magical stat to compare to the target's int (Chr or Agi), that happens to be a stat useful for these jobs, that they can find easilly
- modifiers are this stat at the same time, allowing them to stack as much as they can of a single stat
- MAB performs as normal MAB, multipling damage as it always did with everything magical

Conclusion: it's a good WS. Not the best WS for jobs like Rng that deal high damage, but a good Niche WS for Cor and Bsts to dmg high end-game mobs.


Now, when you add a magical WS for Ninja:
- you mix up two stats that aren't even found more than once together on a single piece of gear
- you give it two modifiers to make it even more complicated
- you transform MAB into a sh*tty static damage (1 mab = 2.4 dmg... why ?)
- you add a poison effect making this WS unpractical on HNMs because players want to be able to sleep these.

It really looks like they took a good idea and made it suck before applying it to Ninja. And that's pretty much the same for everything they add:


- magic burst bonus: no one does skillchains, ou san spells take too long to Mb on the fly, and our Ni spells won't benefit from Mab: they would benefit from higher base damage.

- futae: now, this looks like something that adds more base damage... but once every 3 minutes ? Come on. It would be ok if we had spells like Burst II or Stone V... but we don't even have something that comes close to Stone III.

- You didn't add a single item to support nuking. No Ninjutsu, no Int, no Macc, no Mab... so, what are we supposed to do ? Nuke with the very limited options we already have ?

- The only subjob that allowed us to nuke decently (/rdm) is now totally nerfed. You took away our only serious occasion to nuke.

- Aisha: Interesting to give us a debuff no one else uses so we have something unique, but what about something useful like magic def down or magic eva down ?

- Parrying mastery: a good idea... that doesn't work because we have too much eva. If only we had a JA to lower our evasion to get more chances to parry for more damage. Innin ? With the enmity down, we don't get chances to parry. It doesn't work with parry mastery. It's not even a good try, a 5YO child could tell it.



Come on SE, I'll give you hints on directions to take:
- make ninjutsu debuffs a viable hate tool, so we can seriously tank again (cause /rdm and /drk are close to dead)
- make ninjutsu nukes stronger, with a longer recast, so we can toss semi powerful nukes (300-450 Dmg) but not often
- add weaponskills that work around the gear sets we have, so we can actually use them

Solutions:
- Yonin: (5m duration, 1m recast) Eva +20, Enm +20, makes Ninjutsu debuffs 240 CE/VE, dual-wield -1 trait (= serious tank stance)
- Innin: (5m duration, 1m recast) Acc +20, halves elemental ninjutsu casting time, lowers evasion to C rank, double elemental ninjutsu recast time (= dd/ddtank stance taking advantage of Parry mastery.. somehow like a war, just different dmg souces)

- Futae: (1m duration, 5m recast) Double Ninjutsu base damage, quadruple recast (= possibility to pop out some decent nukes 1/3 of the time, without being able to spam an overpowered wheel forever)

And kaboom: magically, Ninja becomes fun to play again: various, adaptable, able to pop some semi high numbers by various means, with different enmity sources to tank, be it meleing, debuffing or nuking.
Is it so hard to understand and make this job fun again ?

Edited, Jul 5th 2010 1:21am by Oulanbator

Edited, Jul 5th 2010 1:25am by Oulanbator

The issue i have is, there are so very few mobs that my LS actually SC nukes down, that using a nin wouldnt be feasible and i would probably be on Rng or Cor. I like the aspect, but the implementation in game isnt there.


I really do believe that the developers of FFXI just do not even play the game.