Family Name: Mira

Region (NA/EU): NA

Suggestions/Comments

Preface

The following is related to the awaken spec specifically for kunoichi. The following feedback/information was put together by many awaken kuno mains from NA/EU from the kuno discord.

Awaken kuno currently has gone through multiple iterations of buffs that has helped smoothed out her skill chaining, introduced moon storm and the many cancels into it, and occasional PvE buffs, alongside moving/shifting protections/CCs around.

She excels at protections, skill chaining, and plays like a very fluid rat-style class.

A lot of those past changes has helped this spec become very enjoyable, fluid, and performs decently when it comes to skill usage. However, there are a multitude of pain points that has kept awaken kuno in the dark, outdated, and performs very poorly at times.

She has seen many nerfs in the past, especially in damage, and has been slowly buffed in other ways to help smooth out the class. However, she has not been given the light of having those damage nerfs reverted from many years ago. 

The major pain points that need to be evaluated on awaken kuno is:

1. PvE Damage

2. AOE Size (PvE)

3. Damage output speed relative to skill linkage (PvE & PvP)

4. Hitrate & it’s applicability to allow this class to even run evasion (PvP & PvE)

5. Class identity (SA trade? Assassin?)

Pve Damage

Fundamentally, PvE is about your ability to apply damage, debuffs, and self buffs, in a consistent way for each mob pack, in order to excel properly. Depending on the grind spot, this can also include a class’ ability to apply proper AOEs, self-sustain via heals, and be protected to mitigate some damage (such as with FGs).

Many of the highest performing classes excel due to high damage on skills, T3 add-on usage, AOE sizes, and sustain. Relatively newer classes have easier to access, if not more, self buffs and debuffs (especially accuracy rate and evasion debuffs).

Awaken kuno currently lacks this. 

Lethal spin spree and moonstorm are our current decent AOE skills, DP shred, sustain, and perform nicely, but are both on an 8 second cooldown. This is where the rest of the skills start to lack.

Moonstorm is currently our only DP shred skill on a long cooldown.

As for cycling our buffs, chain crash (for 5% crit damage/t3 add-on), half moon (for attack speed) and lunar dash (for mobility & +10 AP), currently do not have seamless skill chaining, which need to be looked into.

AOE Size (PvE)

In relation to PvE, the majority of awaken kuno’s skills lack AOE and are very cone-sized/frontal based. This poses a major problem when it comes to grinding and the ability to hit as many mobs, alongside applying debuffs.

Wrath/indigination/lunar dash/chakram rise - These 4 skills have very small/low range and require mobs to be insanely tight packed to apply damage evenly. With the damage on these skills being low & subjective cooldowns, they are near worthless in PvE.

Delighted blast - This skill is mostly a point-blank melee skill, has delayed low damage explosion hit, small AOE, and is not practical in PvE. 

Wheel of Wrath - The frontal damage of this skill does not extend far enough for this skill to properly apply damage on mobs. The damage is lacking, even more so since many spots don’t have the ability to float mobs to leverage even the air attack. The overall width of the skill is fine though.

Halo - Suffers from the same problem as wheel of wrath. With the change for this skill to have an evasion self buff, this has benefitted PvP but hasn’t gain any ground in PvE.

Damage output speed relative to skill linkage (PvE & PvE)

Some of kuno’s skills link extremely quickly and some don’t. Due to skill linkage on some skills being fast, this is great for burst output/combo damage at times, but is still faced with cooldown related issues & being forced into certain longer animations

Lethal Spin spree - This skill is considered extremely long and the current damage output is low for the current games balance/meta for the length of time you are within the animation. Not only does this result in a drop in overall burst damage, but you end up having to take/soak in more damage than even the heal can sustain on it. This by far, has resulted in poor SA trading in PvP.

Wrath/rise/indignation - All of these have the same issue. They do not link smoothly and do little damage.

Hit Rate (PvE & PvP)

One of the major issues that awaken kuno faces in 2023 is her overall hit rate. This is due to the lack of a self accuracy buff, lack of an evasion debuff, and a massive spread on accuracy rate on skills. 

Skills like wheel of wrath (30%) & flow: wrath (20%) have relatively high hit rates.
Lethal spin spree (15%) & chain crash (15%) have moderate accuracy rate, which I would say is fairly balanced.

The remaining skills on the skill tree are 10% or below, with even completely lacking accuracy rate entirely at 0%  OR have <5-8% (such as danse macabre, delighted blast, half moon, sah spree, lunar dash, chakram rise, & halo.

This poses a major issue of attempting to properly build stats and weigh out where to frontload/make up damage in both PvE and PvP, as building around the many <7% accuracy rate skills proves to be very difficult, alongside there being too many of them.

Because of this, it also makes even attempting to build evasion onto this class almost a lost cause. In the process of doing so, we end up losing so much AP/hit rate, due to such low modifiers on skills, lack of evasion debuff, and self accuracy rate, that we lose out entirely. 

Every other evasion based class has some level of higher hit rate, whether its a better overall spread of accuracy rate on skills, an evasion debuff, or a self accuracy buff (or any combination of the three).

Awaken kuno is still far being in 2023 when it comes to the base average standards for hitrate, and her ability to run an evasion build. 

Class Identity

It would be extremely beneficial if Pearl Abyss would outline what awaken kunoichi’s role and class aim/identity is, so that the players understand what type of buffs to ask for.

While she is an assassin style class, she lacks the damage and kill potential to be as such.

Her lack of accuracy/hit rate is detrimental to her kill potential.

She is not the type of spec to properly run an evasion build, which results in her being insanely squishy on DR gear. Her not having a proper evasion/hit rate debuff on players causes her to have to build more stats, which deviates away from evasion.

She lacks the burst damage & SA trade potential if she is designed to be more of a bruiser-style class/spec. 

Her lethal spin spree heal is outdated in 2023.

All in all, these are all multiple examples as to why this class/spec is currently dead in PvE and PvP (minus AOS). Most players that have mained awaken kuno, cannot understand what she is supposed to excel in, especially in relation to other classes that perform way better in similar/other categories.

General Ideas/Solutions

Now that all of the issues and pain points have been outlined, there are some ideas that can be considered to help shift things around between skills OR just have PA evaluate the damage/skill chaining/cancels in general.

In terms of probably the top priorities in this list, hit rate, damage cycling in PvE/overall damage, and skill chaining for debuffs/self buffs would be the highest priorities. 

• Chain Crash - Add 50% crit hit rate to apply at ALL times for PvE and only apply 50% to PvP when used off cooldown. This would allow damage consistency and provide a filler.

• Chain crash - Remove the animation lock and allow us to cancel the skill so we’re not stuck in animation

• Increase AOE size of wrath, indignation, and rise chakram

• Increase Wheel of wrath’s forward distance on the 2nd hit

• E buff changes: Increase the Attack speed amount from 10% to 15% (as it is redundant with half moon’s buff) & melee accuracy rate from 10% to 15%

• Reduce the skill animationl timing of lethal spin spree

• Reduce the cooldown of wrath/indignation to match lethal spin spree

• Reduce the cooldown on heart snatch & assassin’s trail (these are currently at 30 seconds and 20 seconds respectively)

• Bring back assassin’s trail backwards distance while using the skill

• Reduce the hitrate on any skill over 15%, down to 15% while raising 0% acc rate skills to at least 7% and increasing 7-8% accurate rate skills to 10%

• Update the ALL AP buffs on skills to MELEE AP (such as lunar dash & buff this from 10 AP to 15-20 AP)

• Add an evasion debuff OR self ALL accuracy buff 

• Add an additional 15-20 DP debuff OR melee DP debuff

• Oni shadow should be able to be used in both awaken + pre-awaken stance

• The PvP damage reduction of skills should be dropped by at least 5-10%, to bring it in line with the current SA trade meta

These are all general ideas for changes, however, it is important to discuss ideas around what needs to be added where. The final decision is obviously with Pearl Abyss, but as players, we want to ensure skills given changes/buffs/debuffs are applied in proper applicable ways that make sense.

• Halo was given a self evasion buff. While this fundamentally makes sense to allow the awaken stance to sustain it’s evasion buff, we never really had this issue to begin (as we had smokescreen, our level 56 skill enhancement, and assassin’s trail level 57 skill enhancement). It would make sense to have this buff shifted to a skill such as lunar dash OR half moon, while replacing it with a self accuracy buff on halo.

• Lethal spin spree suffers from SA trading issues, and this is due to how power creep and other classes have impacted our meta. By adding a self DP buff to lethal spin spree OR DP debuff, this would help bring this skill up to 2023 standards, while buffing the +50HP on hit heal to +70 OR +80. 

• Changing self buffs such as ALL AP on lunar to Melee AP, is healthy to allow it to be used in conjunction with our e buff, similar to other classes.

The general idea is that between a self DP buff, DP debuff, self accuracy buff, self AP buff, and evasion self buff needs to coincide with skills that makes sense to support the usage of it. Lastly to add, an evasion debuff would be nice but a self acc buff would be better and having both could be overtuned. 

Awaken Effects

The majority of kunos agree that we have some of the blandest skill effects that are literally nowhere near the effects of our other spec + ninja. 
Succ kuno has amazing black/shadow effects.

Succ ninja has bloody effects

Awaken ninja has bright red coloring on their slashes.

It would be amazing if this was reworked to give the class some depth and color, to match being an assassin.

Bug fixes

• Fix wrath + indignation’s damage drop-off when on elevation/rocks/walls

• Look into fixing collision issues with moonstorm and danse macabre

• Flash slash teleport has issues with being interrupted/not going off when hit staggered

Awakened Kuno is probably one of the most enjoyable classes in the game to play for me, but there are some glaringly outdated components, which are mentioned in the OP. I want to cover a few things to clarify for people who may read this post with little or no REAL experience on the class, as very few people still remain on Awakened Kuno, much less actually grind on one.

When you take a look, at Kunos skills list, it can genuinely appear fairly healthy, the damage on skills seems competitive, having a nice high access t3 addon via chain crash, a nice attack speed buff via halfmoon slash, good protections, the mobility skills such as tendon cutter etc.

the issue with the class is the mismatch between what she has, and how the class is actually played in reality. While many of her skills on paper seem solid, they dont actually work well together in practice. self buffs are very "slow" for what they provide OTHER than buffing, usually very little or effectively no damage.

The Problem : like OP mentioned PvE is about spreading debuffs, while buffing yourself, and dealing damage EVENLY and CONSISTENTLY to every pack of mobs, and then moving to the next. Outside of the mobility aspect, Awakened Kuno has zero ability to do this in her current state. 

how is awakened Kuno PVE? well I can personally say, the only class in the game i've pulled LESS on, is a succession nova, and a succ valkyrie (before her recent buff), bottom 5 type grinder.

conceptually an optimal PvE flow looks like

Pull - > debuff/Buff - > Damage - > next pack

What that looks like for Kuno is

Debuffing -

-dp : Ankle Cutter, it exists, its pre-awakeing it does a whopping 864x2, it can debuff probably...2 mobs if they are already insanely packed, so basically. its not actually useful.

Moonstorm - the only DP debuff, and cannot be applied evenly.

Buffing -

block jump  - 12 melee ap - 10s dura 18s cooldown 

Halfmoon - 10% attackspeed (this is fine) - Deals zero Damage, 1149%x2, 2 hits 50% crit, you only use the first when buffing.

Lunar Dash - +10ap (kinda low, most classes are 15/20, I can still live with this) - deals effectively Zero damage due to having NO AoE, you hit 1 mob in a pack.

Chain Crash - 5% Crit Damage + t3 Addons, this is the FIRST issue. chaincrash is a very LONG skill with very LOW damage, with no reliable cancel (Danse Macabre every 2nd or 3rd cast, if you dont use it for movement, also forces a reposition). when off cooldown the skill has +0% crit, this skill is used EVERY pack to proc the t3 addon, meaning it is doing essentially zero damage, while locking you inplace, unprotected. thats why that 50% PvE crit off cooldown would be a very nice buff, and have zero PvP impact.

now that I've covered some of that, an average day in the life of an awakened kuno, is spending 3 seconds or so every pack self buffing, Pull - > Dash - > Half - > Chaincrash while outputting essentially zero damage, you then debuff with moonstorm and use lethal spin spree, you've now blown both of your 360 degree AoEs of any meaningful size, Lunatic Discus is next, dealing nearly 70% of Lethal's damage, INSTANTLY (in PvE). Probably the healthiest skill in our entire kit. if the pack is dead, you move on, and begin rebuffing, or Using Wheel of Wrath - Indignation - > Wrath > on the next pack if your buffs are still running.

This is where the issue starts. the dead skills, there are no no meaningful skills left in the kit everything is on cooldown, delighted blast, is frankly worthless for PvE, the Range makes it okay for pulling mobs, but theres no real damage, if the mob can be KD'd its now on the floor far away from you instead of being pulled. Danse Macabre, deals basically no damage, its your chaincrash cancel or movement, Chakram Rise...Same thing basically zero REAL damage because you end up hitting almost nothing, it flows off lunar dash which, you just used to rebuff, nothing has a chance to group up. then your left with Sonan Spree, which, while on paper has damage, once again its very slow for its damage, its unprotected without the Core, and WoW off cooldown still does more damage. theres also Halo, which once again unless you are basically inside of the mobs, your hitting 2 or 3 of them. The majority of her entire kit, has fundamental design issues with how PvE flows, in 2018/2019 when you actually Combo'd monsters, this would have been fine, but current BDO its no longer the case the design is dated and flawed for PvE.

Aside from damage, as OP mentioned the class is in desperate need of AoE increases, cooldown synergy, nothing massive, not guardian or Maegu sizes, reworking some of these impractical AoE sizes to be similar to ninja's Katana shower, or Succession Mystic's Wave Orb/Roaring Tiger. would open the door for actual damage balancing to be done, right now as it stands without AoE changes, unless an absurd amount of PvE damage is cranked in to make her very very good at Quint/Oluns/Gyfin Under, theres genuinely no real way to improve her PvE Performance.

100% supporting this!

T3 addons on a skill that doesnt use stamina(maybe halo) and chain crash having more then the one cancel would be nice especially a full cancel. Pretty much agree with the above.

Edit: Seems PA have switched to other classes, hopefully they see this thread to sort out Awaken Kuno

The main mechanical change I would want for Kuno is to have Stiffness on "Tendoncutter" and on "Ninjutsu: Sinew Cut" again.  Or get the vacuum back on delighted blast.  They always remove things on our class for no reason, but keep buffing everything else. 

100% This

The one major   change ill bring back is the  prepatch delighted blast changes  bring back the vacuum as well as  the damage per hit back   this change to delighted blast has truly killed kuno large scale  within the pvp commuity  it was as balance as it could be  and the removeal of that change for delighted blast has made kuno still one of the worse  large scale pvp class reverting   back to the way delighted blast was before the nerfs  would put kuno in such a amazing spot within large scale   but until then kuno will not be  good in large scale  

I really like a lot of points in this post. I've been doing a ton of testing between awakening and succession, and it's clear there still is a very large gap in PvE damage between the two specializations. I have mained awakening Kuno for 6 years and it feels really bad playing such a fun and high apm class, and then comparing your loot at the end of the day to say, a succesion Berserker or Maegu who is literally pulling 50% more trash loot at spots such as Jade Starlight Forest, a "single target" spot that an assassin with small aoe's should thrive at.

Things I would also like to see changed for awakening + succession:

We were given a shiny new mob pulling tool recently in the form of our jumping kunai throw. This is pretty clunky at far ranges, and jumping in itself feels like you are wasting your time in most cases. Comparing to say, a lahn or valkyrie taunt, you might as well not even try using it. I would love to see this changed to just add the aoe component of the jumping attack to the normal kunai throw. It would feel much smoother to pull with, and you could just get rid of the -15% slow from the aoe portion entirely if it's deemed too strong for pvp for whatever reason.

The most recent heidel ball, the devs said they would be looking at class abilities that are hardly ever used, and possibly rework or change them to make them not dead talents in our tree. Kunoichi suffers from many of these. Ground thrust, albeit I have used in the past in very niche situations, and it's nice to lose half your health jumping off cliffs with it, is pretty damn weak for it's niche.

I propose it be changed to a knockdown instead of a bound, adding a much needed knockdown to succession's kit, and it also just makes sense the ground slam would knock someone down. 

Tragic blade. For 6 years we have had this kunai only, kunoichi skill, and it has stayed a locked skill for that entire time. It's finnicky, relies on you losing stamina at the perfect time for the counter attack stun, and locks you in an animation for little reward. I'd like this skill to get scrapped entirely. If we look at ninja, our brother class, their special shuriken skill is Malice. Which is a massively core component of their arsenal in pvp AND pve. Really feels like Kunoichi got the short end of the stick here.

Main points I'd like to see from the core post above. Danse Macabre and Moon storm desperately need to not teleport you through the mobs and miss their damage entirely. Moonstorm is one of our only decent damage skills at the moment, and our only dp shred on a long cooldown. Missing this is truly awful.

Thanks for reading

Yes ! This ! Thank you.