Awakening Ninja - Improvement Plan

Welcome everyone! I am writing this post in an attempt to provide feedback in hopes for positive changes regarding Awakening Ninja.

I mainly go by "Sede" and I am a fairly well known player in the EU Ninja Community aswell as other regions that frequent the Ninja/Kuno Discord such as NA, SEA and others.
Over the years playing this game I have gathered lots of pvp experience playing in one of the stronger Guilds on the EU region in Nodewars and Siege as well as playing lots of Red Battlefield and 1v1s in the Battle Arena and i would consider myself a very competent player on my class.

Having acted as class representative staff on the Ninja/Kuno Discord I have also helped manage our Feedback channels pre Reboot and am regularly in contact with alot of other Awakening Ninja players from different regions talking about our class and our hopes and wishes for it.

The following post will aim at PVP relevant issues and suggestions on how to adress them, as PVE is already in a very decent spot and isnt in need of any more major changes or improvements. Suggestions will try to take something away from the class, while simultaneously giving something else, in order to not result in extreme overall buffs.

1. Building and Identity Crisis

Taking a look at Awakening Ninjas kit, it is very clear to see that it is meant to be an Evasion based class, it needs VERY high Accuracy to reach even somewhat decent hitrates on endgame evasion targets, and it heavily relies on landing CCs to deal actual damage, it is by no means a Superarmor Trade class. The extreme need for high accuracy and AP makes majority of the Awakening Ninja players use Damage Reduction based full glass cannon builds in order to try and do their job as a high damage assassin type class.

All of this creates alot of issues for players: 

- essentially completely unused evasion passive and self-buffs, building an evasion set is not desirable and in fact extremely bad unless you are completely hardcapped levels of gear, and even then you are probably better off using a DR set if you want to do your job (get kills)

- low baseline ignore resistance for grabs or floats especially when using nouver instead of kutum resulting in a RNG gamble when you go for catches or try to apply damage

- even with decently high total Accuracy (tested on ~950) there is still a big struggle to hit endgame evasion targets, even if they dont wear additional evasion accessories. Too much reliance on Asura (E-Buff, +20% all accuracy rate)

SUGGESTIONS:

Change Asura skill to no longer provide +20% all accuracy rate, buff the base accuracy rate of important PVP skills accordingly (Serpent Ascension, Absolute: Bladespin, Illusion of Restraint, Katanashower, Absolute: Malice to name a few of the really important ones, 3 of these have no accuracy at all currently).

This will remove the need to use E-Buff to deal with evasion targets and lessen the need of excessive amounts of accuracy from gear, making building on evasion more realistic and desirable for many players. E-Buff is already primarily used as a outplay tool with its protected stun and/or as a means to heal yourself and stay in a fight for longer, its offensive benefit should be AP and the instant charged Drastic Measure, it should not be needed for basic combat efficiency as it is now.

Add a ignore resistance passive similar to the one of warriors, berserkers, mystics and strikers. Anything regarding grabs or floats, even a very small amount, would be great here and would make gameplay less frustrating as well as make gear/crystal choices less of a headache.

2. Skill Performance

The Reboot focused on improving or changing some of our unused Awakening skills like Vacuum Slash, Corrupt Sword Dance, Mach Explosion and Drastic Measure.

These Changes had a really nice Quality of Life effect on our PVE performance, however, with the exception of Drastic Measure most of the changed Skills remain unused or even locked by the vast majority of players in PVP. 

Theres multiple reasons for this:

- PVP Damage on said skills is not high enough to justify using them over other options.

- The skills are too slow and clunky to use mid-combo. On top of that, Mach Explosion is also completely unprotected with a really long animation, rendering it useless for everything except PVE or 1v1 combos (you still would never use it here over other much better options)

- Awakening Ninjas have developed a very specific playstyle over the years, that incorporates alot of both mainhand and awakening skills. The skills that we use are used for very good reasons and we want to continue using them instead of incorporating more of the clunky reworked awakening skills that are still much worse than the skills that have established themselves as absolutely core, signature abilities like Bladespin, Malice, Shadowstomp and Illusion of Restraint.

SUGGESTIONS:

Look into improving lackluster skills that are ACTUALLY being used.

"Absolute: Bladespin": one of our most iconic and most used skills. Currently deals WAY too little damage in PVP and has 0% crit chance and 0% accuracy rate.

"Bloodthirst: Katana Shower": another iconic skill from the awakening kit. Currently deals too little damage in PVP despite being buffed in the reboot and has 0% crit chance. Additionally, the BSR version of this skill is completely animation locked while the non-BSR version is not and also does too little damage, please make the BSR version behave like the non-BSR version.

Change Vacuum Slash in the following ways to eventually see it being used more in PVP.

1. Make it always just do the Slash Attack - the slow low damage attacks before the Slash Attack are undesirable and are not usually used for forward guard either.

2. Make it a Flow Skill that can activate after certain skills, remove F input since it can interfere with movement and other skill usage, leaving it locked for alot of players. - alternatively, allow Flows to activate even when the skill is locked.

3. Create more flows for it that make sense. for example: LMB after using Flow: Execution.

4. Increase PVP damage to make it a more desirable option to use.

Consider Taking a look at this Suggestion regarding Mach Explosion from the Ninja/Kuno Discord Suggestions Channel from before Reboot.

Video Link:

https://streamable.com/svmq5a

The idea here is to let the explosion hit play out at the position of the initial hit after the player cancels out of the overly long unprotected animation. This will alleviate most of the issues the playerbase has with the skills usage and will offer new creative ways to incorporate it into PVP gameplay.

3. Changes to Stealth and Selfbuffs

Everybody has some things they hate in this game. As a long-term Ninja player I understand that for alot of people our admittedly strong ability to become completely invisible is something they hate. For me it is the overwhelming amount of easy to apply slow debuffs that constantly leave me unable to control my character for 10 full seconds (which is an eternity in this game), rendering me useless and taking out all the enjoyment out of PVP. 

The following suggestions aim to help both sides out.

SUGGESTIONS:

Change the duration of all of Ninjas invisibility buffs to 7-10 seconds down from 15 seconds.

This is meant to nerf stealth-camping to improve the experience other players might have when facing Ninjas in PVP.

Let the 10% Attack Speed on use Buff from Sudden Decapitation also be gained from using Absolute: Shadow Slash.

While maintaining the 10% attack speed buff from Sudden Decapitation is easily achievable in PVE, it is not a practical skill to use mid-combat or during combos in PVP.

Raising the attack speed buff on Absolute: Shadow Slash from 5% to 10% will help to maintain this very important buff in PVP combat in a way that does not interfere with Awakening Ninjas playstyle and flow of combat. The differentiating factor between the Absolute and Prime versions of Shadow Slash should lie in the protection and additional cancel options rather than the attack speed buff that Awakening Ninja desperately needs to function smoothly.

Move the 10% Movement Speed on use Buff from Flow: Sky Stepping to Ghost Greeting instead. In exchange, remove the on hit Attack Speed Buff from Ghost Greeting.

This will help us drastically to maintain the buff mid-combat and aid against the constant threat of heavy slow stacking. having the buff tied to our double jump is really inefficient and not practical for actual combat use.

Add the ability of cleansing Attack- and Movementspeed debuffs to Brace.

Brace is meant as a small HP/WP recovery tool you can use whenever you have a quick moment without immediate danger available to you to get ready for your next combat engagement. Having the ability to also remove slow debuffs from yourself with it would make it that much more useful between fights, and the 13s cooldown it has balances it perfectly to not be too spammable.

4. Revisiting Skills and Fixes

There is alot of talk in the Awakening Ninja community about 2 of our main movement Skills "Silent Charge" and "Ninja Step" having gaps in their protection at the beginning and end. This is especially apparent when doing Silent Charge with a backwards "S" input - you will end up getting CCd ALOT in the beginning parts of the animation. These issues only increase once slowed and punish the player for no reason when trying to actively use a skill to avoid getting hit with a CC. Also, the class still has alot of old bugs aswell as some newer questionable interactions, that players want to have adressed.

SUGGESTIONS:

Please revisit the skills "Silent Charge" and "Ninja Step" and make 100% sure that the I-frame on them lasts from the very start of the animation until the end.

We have to rely on these skills ALOT and it feels awful getting punished when you did not misplay whatsoever

Look into the Awakening Blockjump bug.

When using Awakening Blockjump on a target and going for a Flash Bondage straight after, it often happens that the player model will face the opposite direction of the targeted enemy, resulting in the Flash Bondage automatically missing. This bug has been in the game forever and still has not been fixed.

Change Hotbar Smokescreen to not use up C-Swap cooldown.

Ever since Reboots, using Smokescreen from Hotbar while in Awakening stance will use up your C-Swap cooldown. This interaction is completely new and some players seem to be really upset by this. No one in the community seems to understand this change or the reason for it, and it has not yet been communicated to us if this is intended behavior or not. Please revert it back to the way it was before.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post up to this point! I hope I managed to reflect the views of the Awakening Ninja community and provide good and realistic feedback and suggestions from a experienced perspective.

kind regards,

This tbh 

Mans spitting straight facts

Based suggestions, the man's spitting the truth, pls upvote dear awakening brothers!

Sounds like some well thought-out changes tbh.
Although personally I'm not sure if awa ninja is 'down bad' like some other classes, I don't think it'd be fair to say you cant have QoL changes because other classes are in a worse spot, especially given how well you presented these points.

One thing Id say as an awa witch is just the slow-cleanse skill; ik the speed at which you can use brace, and I doubt that there'd be much I could do to punish it, given that as an awa ninja you almost always will have the disengage advantage over most classes. Id argue it would deserve a longer CD to reflect that; somewhere closer to 30s-60s, IE a skill that is used once during an engage/duel (assuming its not an extended duel). After all, as you said you're an assassin, not a sustain-god. It would still allow for that 'I really need to get this impactful play off'. In return, I wouldnt be opposed to it also granting debuff immunity for 2-3s, so it would also work as a pre-buff before diving.

First of all, thank you for sharing your thoughts in a well put together comment. It is refreshing not to be met with the usual "I hate Ninja you dont deserve to complain about anything" type of response one can often get on the official forums or other BDO communities. :D

I think you are correct, Awakening Ninja is not as "down bad" as some other classes are currently. In skilled hands it can still perform somewhat decent overall.

Because of this, this post does not suggest any unrealistic changes like added protections or CCs on protected abilities that would skyrocket our kit's performance in areas that it already does really well in (namely 1v1s and very small scale PvP content). Instead, it is meant to suggest changes that mainly help the class fit its role and core class design more, reduce frustrating elements in gearing and gameplay, as well as improve the performance of lackluster parts of the kit with mainly larger scale PvP content in mind.

Regarding your thoughts on Brace cleansing slows:

I think you have very solid points and I think a longer cooldown would be justified as a tradeoff for the added utility. Personally i would put it somewhere in between 20-30s opposed to the 30-60s cooldown you proposed, I think a overly long cooldown would not be justified and disruptive to the gameplay flow. 20-30s sounds more reasonable and should be a good middle ground to keep it non-spammable, but available for use in between or before engagements rather than in the middle of a ongoing fight.

let me know what you think!

Listen to this guy! 

YEP. this sounds nice 

Cant say i dont agree with everything written here.... would be kinda crazy if sm1 was listening to this.

Out of all the problems this class has this post identifies highlights and decribes very well the main ones.
These suggested changes are very well thought off wp.