Useless Ninja Abilities?

[imported_Hawkeye_Pike]

Hi all,

after having reached a Ninjitsu skill of 93, the whole set of Ninja abilities is open to me. (I still have a VERY hard time gaining skill...) Some skills seem pretty useless to me. Maybe I just haven't figured out how they work, so I would like to hear your opinion.

Focus Attack :
The additional bonus isn't worth the mana this ability uses. It hardly makes any difference to a normal blow.

Shadowjump :
I wonder what good this ability is. Not only does it take too long to activate and use it; you could stealth the distance in half the time than it takes to shadowjump it. Also, you can never be sure if you will be able to shadowjump to a certain location. There's no way to tell beforehand. I guess shadowjumping fails in 60% of all cases due to an "invalid location". I know that the spot has to be on the same level with no obstacles in between, but even on a plain ground shadowjumping just fails. This makes the ability absolutely useless.

Ki Attack :
While the damage bonus is quite alright, the ability is too difficult to utilize. You often get the message "the attack has to be completed within 2 seconds" and the attack fails (you lose mana despite!) even if you attacked in the 2-second time frame. You get very random results. The skill only seems to work at a specific distance but, it never is sure.

Death Strike :
Another ability with random results and questionable usability. Very difficult timing combined with the fact that the vicim has to run away after the hit to give you the damage bonus. Does this happen? Ever?

Animal Form
is nice, but I hardly use it because you can neither use Ninja abilities nor weapon special moves when in animal form. I sometimes use Dog Form when I want to recover health while hidden, or Ostard Form when I have no mount. But that's about it.

Mirror Image
works, but the benefit is so low that you wouldn't bother using it.

What remains? Surprise Attack and Backstab. You end up using Surprise Attack only, as the benefits are similar and it takes less mana.

Now I wonder if Ninjitsu is just a waste of skill points???
Any comments or opinions?

 

[lysarius]

It depends on your playstyle. IMO ninjas are very useful for solo play and can be handy in group play as well. Poison stars/darts and smoke bomb are two of a ninjas most useful abilities. A lot of the other ninja abilities are pretty underwhelming, but they do have uses:

" Focus Attack :
The additional bonus isn't worth the mana this ability uses. It hardly makes any difference to a normal blow."
- The damage increase is minimal, but this is a pretty decent PVM attack if you use a weapon that has good hit weapon effects. At 120 ninjitsu it doubles the chance the effects will go off:
- hit lightning or fireball on every attack
- Easy to keep hit lower attack and/or hit lower defense on your oppoenent all the time
In addition. I find that the slight damage increase is actually fairly noticable if you have chiv and enemy of one going


"Shadowjump :
I wonder what good this ability is. Not only does it take too long to activate and use it; you could stealth the distance in half the time than it takes to shadowjump it. Also, you can never be sure if you will be able to shadowjump to a certain location. There's no way to tell beforehand. I guess shadowjumping fails in 60% of all cases due to an "invalid location". I know that the spot has to be on the same level with no obstacles in between, but even on a plain ground shadowjumping just fails. This makes the ability absolutely useless."
- Three main uses IMO:
- If you are stealthing and someone gets near you in felucca there is a VERY high chance they will reveal you on each step. You can shadow jump to get some distance between you and them. Now you can stealth in relative safety again.
- You can use shadow jump to move invisibly while mounted. (Go into stealth mode, mount an ethy, now shadow jump to move.) It is almost impossible to walk up to someone without being revealded and use backstab or surprise attack. You can shadow jump right next to someone pretty reliably. You could do it on foot, but as soon as you attacked they would run off and leave you in the dust... With this tactic you can keep up with them because you are already on an ethy
- One of the best things about stealth is that you can explore places where you would die in 2 seconds if you werent stealthed. Sometimes you need to teleport somewhere to explore and coming out of stealth to do it isnt really an option.

"Ki Attack :
While the damage bonus is quite alright, the ability is too difficult to utilize. You often get the message "the attack has to be completed within 2 seconds" and the attack fails (you lose mana despite!) even if you attacked in the 2-second time frame. You get very random results. The skill only seems to work at a specific distance but, it never is sure."
- It is designed to be used in "jousting" PvM. (Ride a mount and use a big slow really hard hitting weapon) However it is hard to use and COST TOO MUCH MANA FOR ITS EFFECT. I find that spamming weapon focus is a more useful strategy.

" Death Strike :
Another ability with random results and questionable usability. Very difficult timing combined with the fact that the vicim has to run away after the hit to give you the damage bonus. Does this happen? Ever?"
- Need 110 to 120 skill to use it with any degree of reliability (best at 115 to 120)
- Need at least 180 combined hiding/stealth to do any siginificant damage with it
- Limited use in PvM. Sometimes it's worth it if you have a fast high armor creature and some mana to blow. Deathstrike and run from it. If it follows you fast enough it will take the full damage. (I find this often works the first time I do it on a creature, but then they get smart and dont follow me if I try it again.)
- VERY VERY VERY useful in PvP. Most people move around like crazy while in PvP. Lots of moving around = death strike really hurts (especially since its damage ignores armor completely). One deathstrike can turn the tide of a battle and 2-3 deathstrikes completely end a battle. If your opponent doest run... thats good too because they are standing there letting you swing at them. (It can be annonying when someone with high DCI and parry just stands there and yawns while you swing at them, but I find they tend to get nervous when you deadly poison them with a dart. Then they run and the deathstrike kicks in. Nasty, nasty ability at high skill levels.)

"Animal Form
is nice, but I hardly use it because you can neither use Ninja abilities nor weapon special moves when in animal form. I sometimes use Dog Form when I want to recover health while hidden, or Ostard Form when I have no mount. But that's about it."
- ostard and higher level forms make it possible to stealth around fast enough that you dont get bored to tears stealthing from point A to B
- Dog/cat form is incredible!!!. Your offense is really limited, but its amazing what you can tank in dog/cat form with some mirror images up. For example, this combo lets me tank things like miasma, coil, thrasher, spite, envy, etc. You are rarely hit, and if you are you regenerate the damage back before the next hit. If they get lucky and hit you back to back several times then just move around a few seconds and regen back to full health while they chase you.

"Mirror Image
works, but the benefit is so low that you wouldn't bother using it."
Awesome in PvM. The chance to deflect attacks is based on your ninjitsu. at 120 ninjitsu it is very Very VERY hard to hit a ninja with a mirror image around. This is great for tanking. Works very nice in combo with dog/cat form.

"What remains? Surprise Attack and Backstab. You end up using Surprise Attack only, as the benefits are similar and it takes less mana."
- IMO backstab ties with ki strike for the most useless ninja ability. There are lots of better uses for that much mana

"Now I wonder if Ninjitsu is just a waste of skill points???
Any comments or opinions? "
- It depends on your playstyle.
- Smoke bombs, mirror images, dog/cat form make an experienced ninja VERY hard to kill
- Stealth templates work well for solo play because they let you go places you could never make it into without stealth. (For example: stealth, poison, shadow strike, and mirror images let me go into pretty much any of the ML dungeons and collect all of the keys needed to fight a peerless boss on my own. Then I can run to the bank and see if anyone is interested in coming to help kill the peerless boss. I already have all the keys.)
- In PvP you attack quickly from stealth and use poison and deathstrike to kill before they gather their wits. If it goes badly... you are the master of escapes.
- If you dont like PvP you can still go to Felucca and avoid pretty much any fight. If a PK shows up, you can smoke bomb, stealth, shadow jump, mirror image. You basically only PvP when and where you feel like it.

 

[Lord Mike]

Well Ninjitsu does have some great benefits but it depends on your play style. If you have stealth/hide it can be good. Unfortunately they nerfed archers so they cant use focus attack or death strike. Well they can use deathstrike but do half the damage.

Shadowjump is crazy buggy and almost not worth testing. If you get that message 'can't see there' or whatever it is, you cant hide again for like 1 minute or something, lol its so long of a delay for no reason.

Mirror images and animal form are AMAZING in PvP. If I get dismounted, I can run and start summoning mirror images and it almost works like I have parry and it also blocks people chasing me, then I can just pop in animal form and run away! Also being a ninja archer I pretty much get owned by anyone with chiv/bush or parry. So I get them 1v1, dismount them, then go into frog form and start summoning mirror images. Everytime they hit me, they poison themselves, and that happens whether they hit me or the mirror image. It really helps even out the field for a range fighter 1v1 with a pure dexxy

.

 

[beef steak]

i have ninja on quite a few of my chars. it's one of the most used abilities i have. on my stealthers, shadowjump is used since i don't have teleport. it gets me to areas that are above or below him/her, you just have to target the edge if it's above, or 3 tiles out if it's below and further away then 5 tiles from any building or house. animal form.....it's essential to my chars that run on foot (those are all pvp'ers tho). plus i can stealth faster if i'm in animal form. some of the weapon specials are usable only with ninja, and use them i do it all depends on your character and your playstyle. none of my pvm'ers have ninja, but all my dexer pvp'ers have ninja. wouldn't fight without it on them.