We start our analysis of ninja race selection by looking at overall characteristics. They have unseen motion, blended, and a short-term cloak, but no trackless movement. Ninjas have !spy at 100% which overlaps with antei of formation. They have stun, a basic step impairment, and dodge. They get 2 bonus attacks (after training), and lastly, ninjas do not fly.
Looking at attributes:
A 0 signifies that a particular attribute has no implications for this class, and as mentioned previously, no mention will be made of universal benefits of an attribute.
Strength: 0
Dexterity: hurricane kick, au-sem-mao, quickblade, stun.
Agility: dodge, vanish, strike from the shadows (on ambush).
Speed: 0 (limited quickblade).
Intellect: 0 (no, joufu's arc doesn't count)
Wisdom: antei of formation, whispering wind antei
Constitution: 0 (limited antei of formation, quickblade)
Willpower: convergence of balance, shadow cast
Primary Attributes: Willpower, Speed, Dexterity
Secondary Attributes: Wisdom, Agility
Trash Attributes: Constitution, Intellect, Strength
One of the key characteristics of the ninja class is the lack of attribute influence. Ninjas have only two spellups that can be reasonably influenced by an attribute, namely convergence and shadow cast. Neither of these spellups scale in a sharp enough manner to justify stacking willpower, although shadow cast is the closest thing that a ninja can call a "strong" buff. But without the additional defensive option of evasion, willpower remains inferior to straight NR/quickness when selecting defensive gear for a ninja. Hurricane kick damage does, in fact, scale with dexterity. However, it also scales with +dam to such a degree that strength -- an absolute 0 influence attribute -- will improve hurricane damage about as much. The influence of intellect on joufu's arc is capped below 200 intellect.
Due to this low attribute influence, ninjas are freer to pursue direct character boosts, which include resists/NR/quick defensively and hit/dam/dex/speed offensively. And it's a good thing, too, since the class itself has extremely limited incoming damage control. Quickness and dodge is where a ninja's defensive abilities begin and end. In a bash/trip/multiple attacker environment, this creates weak damage avoidance with no damage mitigation. Therefore, there is a strong pressure for a ninja to select damage mitigation in a race.
With the sole exception of footpad (and footpads are always an exception for reasons which should be saved for future discussion), ninjas are the fighter class with the least combined hit/dam/attacks from class. That is the reason that speed is considered a major attribute for ninjas, despite having almost no influence on class mechanics. Dexterity is then tacked onto speed to prevent degradation. Normally, the author considers attack degradation to be an insufficient reason to wear dexterity in most circumstances. Only a very large difference (e.g. 150 or more) and exceptional circumstances (e.g. pk) warrant worrying about dexterity. However, the boost to hurricane kick and au-sem-mao help lift dexterity to importance for ninjas, although not to the point of making dexterity a necessary attribute.
Given low attribute influence, the presence or absence of a particular attribute is not key to selecting a race. Rather, the direct benefits of flight, resistance (of which physical is of course the most important), hit, dam, NR, quick, and racial attacks will have relatively greater importance. With these points in mind, several races have been selected as notable and will be presented with brief explanation in a follow-up post. At this point, the reader should be equipped to make guesses as to particularly good or particularly inappropriate races for the ninja class.
In pvp, do you believe Au-sem-mao or Hurricane kick to be superior to Stun?
ReplyDelete1. There are always times when flexibility or immediacy are priorities over the power of stun: you need to take out something small (like a pet or a newbie) in order to get at the big guy; or perhaps you simply cannot afford the lag (target is attempting to flee).
ReplyDelete2. If all the below factors are present, au-sem-mao is superior to stun:
A. sufficient endurance to avoid hit/dam penalties
B. you're not getting hit often enough to warrant the reduction in their hits
C. you're not missing enough to warrant the increase to your hits
D. target does not have evasion
Meeting all of these requirements almost never happens, and sometimes I will au-sem-mao despite the target having evasion (like against a necromancer). But mostly, you'll find that these factors are present when you're flanking and your tank's damage+survivability won't improve significantly by your stun (or perhaps you're trying to off someone before their friend arrives).
Bottom line: stun's mostly better, but sometimes the lag investment is too high