Ninja? Iframes? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Sage is needing buff honestly 

You need to lay off the booze 🤣

Seeing all those class carried ppl crying is so hilarious :)

I should start streaming and asking people to clip every time I get caught by a random cc in Ghost Step or Silent Charge, or standing up after being combo'd, Ninja Stepping to get out, then dying in their damage/cc mid-Ninja Step anyway. Such good iframes, and they're gated by CD lul. Only comparable iframe is Sorc because of Night Crow and Bolt's spammy nature, and Sorc is allowed to have the iframe because they don't have anything else in their kit to compensate for taking that away. They lack your protected damage, they don't have a ranged grab, they don't have access to the amount of movement you do, stamina costs are a huge gate in their kit. All they have is their spammable iframe, crows, and grj to really rely on to stay relevant. Crows and GRJ aren't even comparable to anything Sage can do. I hate Sorcs just as much as they next guy. They are not fun to fight. But until they rework elements of the kit, they can't make it any less cheesy or it becomes a dead class.

Form Shift? Quickslot Gravity Rift? Any of your skills that can be quickslotted are an easy swap back to main hand.

Rift chain is on a 4s cd in awakening, not 7s. Same as Succ. Where did you get 7s from? Yes, rift chain is spammable in succ only, but it becomes super armor only on cd.

No form of damage mitigation outside of bolt? What are you on? Shock Relay - FG, Impaling Flash - iframe while invisible, Upsurge - FG, Lightning Prison flow - FG, Impaling Flash - iframe while invisible. That's just your awakening and those skills offer some form of mitigation. You have access to S-Block in either form and a q block in main hand. Rift Chain is a 2.5ish second iframe. Remember the quick slot skills I mentioned above? You can cancel any of them with rift chain so long as you do it before the cancel finishes. So essentially, you can use forward guard while casting quickslots as long as you have rift chain up and stay fully protected, or use void blast/gravity rift when you don't have rift chain up. 

The devs obviously agree with user feedback at this point, and they want you to use more of your kit to stay protected/mitigate damage. Y'know, instead of just playing near-to-full awakening and being almost untouchable just rotating protected skill -> iframe -> protected skill -> iframe -> cc/dmg when safe, or at any point in the rotation when it's safe to use something more risky. Or just use Divine/Flash to blockjump style grab someone, then be done with them. 

Not only that, the insanely squishy part isn't even correct. He's, at worse, in line with the rest of the classes. He has one of the highest melee and ranged evasions in the game, with average DR and magic DR that's in line with magic classes. Yes he doesn't have defensive buffs, but not all classes have those either-only about 10 and sages don't need them, not to mention that can be offset with add-ons.

Wow! This is a pretty long comment, seems like you put some thought into it. So I'll try to respond to everything one by one by paragraph.

(Also before I start, maybe I didn't preference this before. But when I refer to damage mitigation I'm talking about class passives and skill actives that allow players to take less damage than they usually would from an ability. I.E Ninjas innate prowess in evasion mixed with the rather strong evasion buffs he gets when casting certain abilities. 

But for the sake of this argument, I went ahead and included forward guards into the term "damage mitigation.")

So first, you start by lementing on how often you find yourself getting caught out during your "iframes", stating how they're gated behind CD's and implying that overall the iframes you have access to on Ninja aren't good enough to be compared to anything sage has.  I feel as though it's easy to say this due to it being based off your own personal feelings and experience about the class, and it isn't laid out in the form of "hard facts." So arguing against it is kinda pointless for me, but if I were to do so I'd mention first; How many iframes a ninja in reality has access to within his kit compared to sage, and their respective cooldown. So lets count!

Sage:
Divine executioner: 17 sec CD, and a 0.8 sec (not an exaggeration.) Iframe sandwiched inbetween the start of the skill and the initial leap of the skill. This meaning for around 1 full second when you start the skill it's only a super armor, it then transisitions into an iframe for 0.8 seconds, and then back into a super armor again. This is our flying ability, somewhat similar to guardians flying ability but it doesn't go as far. Now! something that you can do to get an extra 0.8 seconds of iframe out of this ability is to use it's flow Judgement, which is essentially a repositioning tool that brings you directly above an enemy (kinda like a blockjump but not as comitting or powerful.) In reality, trying to use this ability as an iframe to avoid incoming damage will just get you killed, and it's 100% just used for basic repositioning or escaping. 

Bolt: (Which will be deleted soon) Obviously you know this one. 2 second cooldown but if can be used on cooldown as long as you use another awakening ability before doing so. (But it can't be an awakening ability that's on cooldown. I.E. [Relay]  Each time this iframe is used while on cooldown it drains 250 stamina, as well as it forces us to use a seperate awakening ability between doing so, so in actuality, if you wanted to continously spam this ability you'd have to continously cycle through your abilities to do so(some of which also require stamina.). This means the abilities we mainly use for catching people most of the time have to be thrown out at the air in order for us to dodge incoming damage.  In bolt, the protections go like this.
Basic: Superarmer>iframe>super armor
Overcharged: (I.E when used on CD) Iframe>superarmor

Impaling Flash:7sec CD. This skill, in order to properly use it's iframe requires you to actively engage and dive in towards the enemy, and it's only an iframe during the initial start of the skill (like 0.3 seconds), and SA during the rest of it.  

Rift Chain: 4 sec CD. Now this one is kinda interesting when it comes to the awakening kit. Because in order to use it from awakening you need to use a seperate skill first. This being our third rabam Void eruption (which is a 10 second CD). The reason you have to use Void eruption is first is because it's the only real way to safely get into your preawakening stance kit, since using form shift locks you into the initial animation.  So basically, if you want to safely use rift chain you'll have to wait 10 seconds between doing so. (or 8 seconds if you use form shift, but using form shift will get you immediately killed.)


Ninja:

Flashing Light: 8 second cooldown. A rather great Iframe that's not only a good mix of full on dis-engaging, but also pretty great for in-combat mobility. I haven't had a ton of time using this ability on ninja, but from my experience it's actually a really nice iframe to have in the kit.

Silent charge: 2 sec CD. Large leap iframe, nothing special. Amazing to have in mix with ghost step, isn't locked behind engaging. Also has a pretty low stamina cost at only 150 stamina.

Illusion of Restraint: 24 second CD ability. great damage, great versatility. The only thing bad about it is the cooldown. You could also use Ninjutsu: decapitation instead, but if I'm not mistaken most ninjas go for restraint.

Beheading the dead: 18 Sec CD Catching ability, pretty versatile in it's uses, especially since it's a mostly protected catch ability that does pretty good damage. It's also an iframe while vanished which is pretty great.

Ninja Step: 6 Sec CD, non targeted, long distance iframe. Honestly one of the best iframes in the game in terms of it's versatility. Great for engaging, disengaging, as well as neutral. All around a very good iframe that's actually pretty long distance.

Ghost Step:1 sec CD Iframe. This is the ninjas bread and butter iframe, 200 stamina per use (50 less than bolt), I have nothing to say about ghost step really. It's bread and butter, anyone can tell you how amazing this skill is. No need for me to here lmao.

Block Jump

Awakening Grab.


So now that we have them laid out, let's compare them.

 We'll start by comparing how many each class has compared to each other. As well as the amount of low cooldown options we have available. (low cooldown = anything under 8 seconds.

Ninja: 4 low cooldown options, all of which are not locked behind engaging with an enemy and can be used with a large amount of versatility.

Sage: 2(3) Low cooldown options, 1 of which is locked behind actively engaging towards an enemy player (Impaling Flash) , and the "(3)" Is locked behind a 10 second (or 8 second if you use form shift and risk guaranteed death.) barrier to entry.  Now one could say "Yeah but you can spam your iframe as long as you use an ability between it!.) Which, yes. That is true. And it would be a good argument if Ninja didn't share the exact same requirement for using spamming Ghost Step (while fully protected mind you.) through his neutral game [stance swapping > ghost step. > stance swap.] What's funny is if you look at it that way, Ninja is actually more protected in sage when it comes to this. Since sage has access to only his awakening skill tree if he wants to spam his iframe, and not all of his awakening skills (especially the ones most commonly used for gaining overcharge) are protected.

So not only does Ninja have better iframes (I.E iframes that can be used with far more versatility and less restrictions.) But he actually has more iframes in both the Low CD section and long cooldown Section of the class. 

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! 

Not only does ninja completely outclass sage in terms of Iframe versatility, but it also beats out sage in the mileage that it gets through using his iframes, due to ninjas innately "slippery" nature brought onto the class due to his multitude of different evasion passives. 
Having access to all of this evasion means that not only outclasses sage in iframe versatility and amount, but he also outclasses sage by base damage mitigation, since sage has no real form of it whatsoever. So if a sage takes a hit, he takes it full on. He has no innate tankiness through any evasion/dr passives. So in reality, the only way for a sage to avoid or mitigate damage is to rely on his extremely frail frontal guard, or his bolt iframe. (which again, to use in a "spammy" nature requires him to blast out all of his damage resources as well as drain an insanely large amount of stamina, which will lead him to being defenseless within a few seconds of doing so.) 

Also, your argument as to "any of your preawakened skills that can be quickslotted can all be used to get into your mainhand and can be immediately canceled" While you're correct you can use them from the awakening stance, Many of them cannot be canceled. And many leave you stuck in the animation Or they're just unprotected in general, which both of those options lead them to not being a choice worth using. The only ones that are, are the two I listed. 

Just because it says you can do it on paper, doesn't mean it's actually a good idea to do so. 

Hopefully I replied to everything with this post, if I didn't let me know and I'll reply to it. But in closing.


Ninja not only has better, more versatile iframes than Sage, he also has character passives and actives that allow him to not have to fully and completely rely on completely dodging damage with iframes in order to survive. 

Sage on the other hand is innately extremely squishy, and has ONLY his bolt Iframe for reliably avoiding incoming damage. So to outright remove this without giving him any sort of innate changes to his character and passives to allow him to survive damage without having to rely on bolt for iframing, is a horrible idea.  (This is the same issue succ sage suffers from.) 





[ SHORT EDIT!!




 I was informed that I forgot two Iframes from ninja, these being their awakening grab and Blockjump. So I'm going to include those above but not actually cite them completely, We all know what they do haha 

You missed 2 more i-frames ninja have:

Block jump, probably the most iconic skill ninja has and succesful awakening grab which is i-frame in case you catch someone.

Ahhh you're right, While I was writing my response I had blockjump in mind but I suppose when it came time to mention it I forgot haha. And I completely forgot about their grab being an Iframe. Thank you!