Family Name: Altersen

Region (NA/EU): EU

Suggestions/Comments

Preface

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

(the following link will send you to succession: https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Forum/ForumTopic/Detail?_topicNo=41810&_page=1)

Awakening kunoichi has currently 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 However, there are a multitude of pain points that has kept awaken kuno in the dark, outdated, and performs very poorly at times.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 nerfs in the past, especially in damage, and has been slowly buffed again to help smooth out the class. However, she is still not in the right spot, yet. 

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)

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 chain crash 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. Furthermore, the change from flow: wrath to pinwheel was a nice concept for another AOE skill in awaken kunos kit but left us with less dmg overall in PvE and PvP althogether.

Moonstorm is currently our only DP shred skill on a somewhat long cooldown as we dont have another good way to apply the debuff again.

As for cycling our buffs, chain crash (for 5% crit damage/t3 add-on) and half moon (for attack speed) currently do not have seamless skill chaining, which need to be looked into. Although thats the case, the recent changes to lunar dash (from 10ap to 9% eva for 10 sec) and halo (from 9% eva to now melee 20ap selfbuff for 10 sec) helped a bit in regards to applicability of those said selfbuffs/debuffs.

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.

Indignation/lunar dash/chakram rise/moonstorm/halo - These 5 skills have very small/low range and require mobs to be insanely tight packed to apply damage evenly. Additionally to that the very first hit of sonan sah spree has not the same AoE size as the last two hits and the second hit of wheel of wrath does not match the AoE size of the first hit, meaning that the second hit is smaller then the first one. With the damage on these skills being low & mostly subjective cooldowns, they are near worthless in PvE.

The recently changed flow: wrath to flow: pinwheel is, as already stated, an interesting aproach to giving awakening kuno more AOE skills to her repertoire, but the actual benefit of it is comparable to that of lunar dash when comparing the dmg 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. 

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 either low for the current games balance/meta or the AOE itself is not enough to apply the damage properly considering the PvP aspect of the game. The skill itself seems to be seperated into two parts as well, while the beginning has the majority of the 20 hits and the second halfs damage is falling off greatly. Althogether, the skill does way to little damage for the length it needs to apply said damage. This by far has resulted in poor SA trading in PvP. Furthermore the changes to it moving now forward by a small margin has almost to no benefit in PvE or PvP because it has no collision during its movement. Spin spree can additionally lead to problems when linking it with indignation right after, to phase through the target.

Pinwheel/rise/indignation - All of these have ostly 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: pinwheel (50% but is a summon) 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 3).

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

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, an accuracy self buff 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 provides a filler.
• Chain crash - Remove the animation lock
• Chain crash - Lower the cooldown to 9 seconds
• Animation cancel out of chain crash, delighted blast and lunatic discus
• Drastically increase the damage of flow: pinwheel so it can be used in PvE or PvP
• Add the possibility to chain indignation after moonstorm with the rmb input
• Increase lethal spin damage
• Increase AOE of indignation, and chakram rise
• remove downsmash of moonstorm
• 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 animation timing of lethal spin spree
• Reduce the cooldown for the rabams by half the amount (these are mostly at 30 seconds) and buff the damage of those skills 
• 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%
• Add a self melee accuracy buff of 9% to a skill like delighted blast, as it is a skill needed in almost every scenario of awakening kunos gameplay
• 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
• Brace - Buff the hp heal up to at least 500 hp or make brace a holding skill so that that you heal an amount of 200 hp per second while holding the skill itself

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.

• 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. 

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. 

Awakening 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

Awakening 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 indignation’s damage drop-off when on elevation/rocks/walls
• Look into lethal spin's movement having no collision and when chaining with danse macabre the skill goes through the target not applying the damage
• Look into fixing collision issues with moonstorm and danse macabre
• Flash slash teleport has issues with being interrupted/not going off when hit staggered
• You can't c swap with c after half moon slash when using it to the left

This post is mostly taken over/rewritten with consent by a post made in may by Mira, a kuno from NA who posted this in regards to potential class rebalancing. The link tot he original post is here: https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Forum/ForumTopic/Detail?_topicNo=33788&_categoryNo=7&_searchType=0&_sortType=6&_orderType=False&_bigPageNo=1&_pageNo=1&_pageSize=25&_searchDay=0&_forumListType=0

While it can be said that the entire kunoichi community is desperately asking for buffs it is known that not all oft he changes can be applied. Still changes like a hitrate buff would already be a major step towards the right direction oft he class itself.
Once again these are all general ideas for changes and are of course open for discussion.

Huge thanks as well to soFrosty for looking over the forum posts for kunoichi and helping smooth those posts out a bit. (Link to his twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/sofrosty)

This is a very good summary of Kuno's current state. 

Mechanically the class is working just fine. The main issue is that she just loses on stats.

Awakening Kunoichi lost the DR buff, which makes trading harder than before. (It used to be on lunar dash)

Awakening Kunoichi has a questionable hit rate on average. 

Awakening Kunoichi has questionable damage compared to other assassins either because of stats or simply the % damage of the skills. 

Personally I would like to also see awakening Kunoichi receive a 5 to 10% ignore  ALL resistance passive. Also the Critical hitrate +16% on 'Crimson Eclipse' should be changed to something else, maybe add Ignore resistance or DP. 

Hopefully PearlAbyss will try to do something about the large imbalance in stats. 

I agree to the post and would also like to add that in PvP scenarios, Kuno has too many skills that are either are barely useful right now or fulfill a extremely similar role, which means Kunos end up using the best two options for that role and the remaining ones almost never.

Example of skills that are hardly useful and provide too little as a skill overall in PvP:
- Flow: Block Jump: This skill provides 6 more ap compared to Ninjutsu: Block Jump, but other than that no additional benefits besides the awakening stance

- Chain Crash: Sah Chakram: This skill has a long animation and does not deal sufficient damage to trade, which makes it hardly usefull. In addition it is risky to use, since in the current meta most classes can get behind a frontal guards and cc you extremely quickly

- Flow: Pinwheel Fury: This skill deals no meaningful damage or other utility and is therefore hardly beneficial. Since it is a raw damage skill and not a movement or CC skill, the slow effect is hardly beneficial, since generally slows want to be used on targets that are not CCed, in order to CC them easier

Example of skills that fulfill the same role, which leads to Kunos using the best ones of those a lot, while the other ones seem hardly useful:
Sah Spree of Sonan, Flow: Chakram Rise, Wheel of Wrath and Delighted Blast are all close range CC skills with more or less quick animations.

CC comparison:
While all the other ones float your opponent, Delighted Blast's CC is a Knockdown, which is very much preferred to float in the current meta. In addition to that it is the only skill out of the four mentioned ones, that creates a projectile. Therefore it has a small edge over the other ones CC wise.

Defensive comparison:
When it comes to defensive aspects, all four of them are unprotected, while only Sah Spree, Delighted Blast and Wheel of Wrath can be upgrades to Core skills, making them a protected CC. These facts already render Flow: Chakram Rise far inferior, since it can not have any sort of protection.

Damage comparison:
When it comes to damage, Wheel of Wrath is superior to all the other three remaining skills.

This leads to the vast majority of Kunos using only Delighted Blast (better CC) and Wheel of Wrath (better damage) depending on the situation and depending on the choice of core skill. Meanwhile Sah Spree of Sonan and Flow: Chakram Rise hardly ever get used, since they provide no benefit over the other two.

Suggestion:
Give Sah Spree of Sonan a new role by reworking the skill itself and/or it's effects. We do not need a fourth unprotected small range CC (with low damage). A few patches ago, Pearl Abyss decided to make it a protected (frontal guard) movement skills, which was very much welcome and a new useful addition to our kit. For example in fights against ranged classes like Rangers and Archers, it was used to chase them down, while being protected with frontal guard. I suggest reverting the current Sah Spree of Sonan to that iteration and I suggest considering buffing it, so it can fulfill that role better. For example by increasing the distance it moves you.
When it comes to Flow: Chakram Rise, I suggest either giving it some kind of utility (or raw damage) that makes it the correct choice to use over Delighted Blast and Wheel of Wrath depending on the situation, or reworking that skill alltogether, so it provides something, which fulfills a completely different role than a small range CC.

:)