Family Name:  SEDE + Limit

Region (NA/EU):  EU

Greetings,

On todays global lab patch we got a large number of changes to awakening ninja.

While overall the changes seem to be fairly well thought out, there is still a couple things that Pearl Abyss should be taking another look at before releasing this patch to the live servers.

In this post I will go over the changes made on the global lab, try to provide constructive feedback and give suggestions on how to alter the patch to make it a update to the class that i am sure the vast majority of the ninja community would be happy with.

Murderous Intent

To kick things off I would like to adress the obvious elephant in the room.

Murderous Intents cooldown has been doubled from 3 seconds to 6 seconds.

According to the developer comment on the patch, this change was made because the skill was deemed too strong for 1V1 PvP when used with its Core Skill Option that adds a Superarmor Effect to it - and while the majority of our community thinks this is a fair point, we believe it is not the correct approach to nerf the skill itself in such a majorly impactful way rather than making changes to or even removing/replacing the problematic Core Skill.

Murderous Intent is a skill every awakening ninja uses frequently within our movement chains, to attempt CCs and as a combo tool and the doubling of its cooldown makes the class' overall gameplay feel way worse and punishes players unnecessarily even if they do not even use the Core Skill for it.

Therefore i would like to suggest the following possible solutions, ordered from the one i think would be best to the one i think would be the least optimal:

1.) Increase the Cooldown of Murderous Intent to 4 seconds instead of 6 seconds and change nothing else.

2.) Revert the Cooldown of Murderous Intent back to its original 3 seconds and remove/replace/alter the Core Skill.

The Core Skill could be replaced by "Core: Shadow Slash" (Q skill in awakened stance, adds Superarmor Effect to the skill), as suggested by community members on the Ninja Discord.

The Core Skill could be altered to only increase the Cooldown of Murderous Intent to 5 seconds when the Core Skill is being used to add a "drawback" to the choice.

3.) Fully revert all changes made to Murderous Intent and leave it exactly as it is in the current live patch.


Vacuum Slash

The idea of being able to use this skill as a flow after Serpent Ascension is definitely going in the right direction, as finding a suitable damage filler right after Serpent has been an issue for a very long time. However, even after the changes, the core problem remains which is its input key "F".

"F" is an input that intertwines with two crucial abilites of awakening ninjas kit: Ghost step ("W"+"F") and serpent ascension ("S"+"F"). The likelyhood of unwanted usage of vacuum slash is therefore considerably high, especially due to the very frequent usage of Ghost Step during movement. On top of that, the now missing protection on the skill is especially concerning in this regard.

Here is possible solutions to finally make Vacuum Slash a frequently used and desirable Skill:

1.) Turn Vacuum Slash into a real Flow skill, removing the ability to cast it without chaining it off of previous skills. This is THE ideal solution, since in the vast majority of cases nobody would want to use Vacuum Slash uncancelled anyways. This would solve essentially ALL input problems that plagued the skill for YEARS, make it a very desirable skill to use.

2.) Find a different key input for Vacuum Slash OR give us the option to use its cancelled versions when using the skill from a Hotbar slot.


Sura Chaospree

First and foremost, the appearance of the skill is amazing and it fits the awakening ninja's theme very well. However it lacks proper usability in pvp scenarios and is therefore unlikely to be integrated in the awakening ninja gameplay often, which would be a waste. In its current state the skill lacks more options to remove the "wind-up" animation before the cutting motion happens and the PvP damage is not high enough to justify the stationary and animationlocked nature of the skill.

In the current Iteration the wind-up animation can be skipped when the skill is used after "Mach Explosion", "Flashing Light" and "Katana Shower". This should be made possible from more awakening skills aswell as after using any of our mobility skills to make using it less clunky and the PvP damage should be adjusted to better fit the high impact animation of the skill and put an emphasis of risk vs reward when choosing to use Sura Chaospree as a damage option in PvP.

To make this new flashy and exciting skill a staple of the awakening ninja identity for years to come, I would like to suggest the following:

Allow the short wind-up animation before the cut to be skipped when using "Sura Chaospree" directly after "Serpent Ascension", "Drastic Measure", "Ghost Step", "Ninja Step" and "Silent Charge".

Change the PvP Damage Reduction from -70% to somewhere around -55%.

Im sure that if these changes were to be implemented in the ways I described, the awakening ninja community would overall be very satisfied with the changes made to their beloved class and Pearl Abyss would have succeeded in bringing this old fan favorite closer to the modern day standards of BDO class design.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this post, and thanks to Limit/Hamza aswell as the rest of the ninja community for discussing this patch thoroughly to make a thought out feedback post like this possible.

kind regards,

^ Great post Sede, Agreed

This is a very beautiful post. Leave MI the way it always has been. 

Leave MI CD alone, delete the core we dont care

man this buff is cringe dont do it ninja will be full dmg with Protected movements. get a grip guys

Ninja mains can't take a punch, pipsqueaks.

Great post from Sede and Hamza, please revert the MI change to as they were, or remove the core and bring it back to 3s.

Nah, it's been 5 years of punches. Time for the devs to actually do something for our class so it's relevant in node wars and sieges again. This nerf wasn't even necessary. Now go back to rping on Cal2, buddy.