Ninja Spy still needs some love

[edrein]

Is it honestly too late to provide suggestions and feedback for Ninja Spy? I mean it's clear that this build will be the update released most likely next week, but is it possible to revisit ninja spy when update 34 is released in January? The constant 5d6 sneak damage is a minor damage buff in the long haul, and the 20 second clicky for the same amount is rather paltry when the cooldown is considered. Take in consideration the other two 'sneak attack' heavy trees (barring rogue's natural sneak damage die progression); Deepwood Stalker gains 6d6 sneak attack from the core abilities and Assassin gains 4d6 in the core with another 4d6 in the enhancement lines. As of this update Ninja Spy will have the ability to deal 9d6 sneak damage before using the clicky, which is a good amount. The problem comes from the differences in trees fully.

Both Assassin (Assassin actually has two) and Deepwood Stalker gain abilities that reduce enemy fortication and creates sneak attack opportunities without requiring a save or any form of itemization/stating. With the recent 'pass' in update 33, the Unbalancing Strike was added which atleast removes sneak attack immunity at the downside of having both a DC for negating and periodic saves on the effect. This gap is widened by the fact that both Assassin's Trick and Mark of the Hunted remove fortification.

However, this is even further exaggerated by the abilities in both of these trees compared to Ninja Spy. Both have strong in-tree synergies that don't require multiclassing (Or even using a different tree in their class) to feel adequately powerful. Assassin's gain one of arguably the best instakill abilities in the game through Assassinate; additionally after their pass they gained a passive 30 melee power buff for simply staying in sneak which they were already doing to boost their assassinate DC. On the other hand Deepwood gained 20 MP/RP, +4 Dex, and +3d6 sneak attack in their capstone; not even mentioning the MP/RP, damage boosts, etc. in the T5 lineup. Both of these trees share the coveted Killer enhancement for the +20% morale doublestrike/doubleshot, and you even gave Deepwood an additional +10% doublestrike and +20% doubleshot T5. Assassin Poisons are incredibly useful but yet we didn't see Ninja Spy's poisons remotely get a similar treatment in either effects or updates to the Ninjitsu line.

In the case of buffing 'tree themed' weapons, assassins again have the ultimate advantage. At level 12 their T5 gives daggers +1 to multiplier and range, while their core 18 doubles the multiplier damage to an x4 base for daggers. That makes your average untouched dagger turn into a 18-20x4 before Improved Critical/Keen, Overwhelming, etc. On the recent spectrum the T5 for Ninja Spy; Deadly Striker gives +1 threat range to non-handwraps or quarterstaves, while also giving +2 threat range to shurikens and kamas. While a ninja spy doesn't get their +1 crit multiplier until their capstone at 20. That means in comparison your average untouched kama is now a 18-20x3 before Improved Critical/Keen, Overwhelming, etc. Now take into consideration that there are plenty of named daggers with unique profiles, damage, effects, etc. at all levels while there is a total of five unique named kamas in the game, you can see a bit of a problem here.

Additionally; we've gone through a full update and most likely two patches before Ninja Spy has had it's enhancements or their costs tweaked. Most of the Enhancements are severely outdated, remnants of the original Enhancement Pass over 3 years ago. But even then most of them were legacy holdovers from the original Ninja Spy enhancements. Things like No Mercy being 2AP per rank, while the same T4 for Acrobats is 1AP per rank. Deadly Exploit 2AP per rank, should be brought down to 1AP per rank as well and double checked to work with the new Poison Exploit damage formula. Sting of the Ninja is weak; especially compared to direct damage weapon toggles/effects such as: Venomed Blades, Kinetic Bond, Storm Dancer, and especially Lighting the Candle with the buff to its damage in this patch.

What I would suggest is take the 5d6 sneak attack from capstone and redistribute it in the cores, but not as sneak attack damage. Instead redistribute it as poison damage to capitalize on both the theme of Ninja Spy and Ninja Poison's vulnerability portion. Change the cores as follows: Basic Ninja Training (Level 1) weapons gain 1d4 poison on hit, Advanced Ninja Training (Level 3) weapons gain 1d8 poison on hit, Shadow Veil (Level 6) gains 1d6 sneak attack die, Poisoned Darts (Level 12) turns the poison damage into a 3d8, Diversion (Level 18) gives 1d6 sneak attack die and +5% stacking Incorporeal or +5 Dodge Cap, and finally Ninja Master (Level 20) turns the poison damage into 5d8. This scaling gives Ninja Spy a similar base damage increase similar to Keeper of the Chalice while maintaining the unique identity of Ninja Spy's poisoning nature without adding purely late core damage in the form of another active ability on an already overactive class and a big capstone sneak boost without the means to make it consistently damage most enemies.

The only overall big change besides the cores would be the T5s. Ninja Spy is arguably a TWF tree by design, however they lack a boost to their offhand chance. Yes, you can pick up Deft Strikes from Shintao for 10% which is fine, however they lack the ability to take Meditations of War as well and gain full offhand bonus. I would suggest changing Crippling Strike to the following: Crippling Strike: On damage you have a 10% chance to hamstring a target for 50% move speed, as well as increasing your offhand chance by 10%.
Touch of Death also needs to have Stunning Bonuses added to it's calculations like every other monk finisher/ability to match the rest.
This also applies to Fists of Darkness and Touch of Despair, and the rest of the Dark Finishers as none of them were effected in the Lamania Patch despite the patch notes.
Deadly Striker needs one last tweak; please, please, please finally allow us to be centered with default monk proficiency weapons. Let Deadly Striker center us with daggers, handaxes, and crossbows. Let Henshin Mystic or Shintao center you with clubs.

All in all it's a long rant on changes and balance, but I think this would overall help the Ninja Spy tree feel balanced compared to similar trees of other classes and competitive with the updated Shintao (especially with their +3W boost) and Henshin's insane multipliers during Cauldron of Flame. (By no means am I arguing that Ninja Spy should be similar to Deepwood or Assassin despite the initial comparisons. What I would like to see is Ninja Spy's current sneak attack bonus traded out to a tree appropriate poison damage to keep the unique mechanics and damage type of Ninja Spy alive, as currently there isn't enough synergy in Ninja Spy to warrant high sneak attack like Assassin and Deepwood have with fort reduction/bypass and sneak vulnerability.)

[Tilomere]

del

[edrein]

I'll just talk about shuriken. The crit range at level 12 isn't meaningful due to a lack of on-crit procs prior to tier 2 LGS or crit multiplier.

So there is a 17 level gap where ninja spy doesn't offer anything to throwing. Shadow fade isn't useful on a ranged. Poisoned darts costs too much precious ki, and diversion isn't useful.

I would take the 5d6 sneak, and put 1 in the 6 core, 1 in the 12 core, 1 in the 18 core, and leave the last 2 in the capstone. Bluff isn't a monk skill, and charisma isn't a primary stat either, so the additions earlier will add continuing power through heroics most noticeably at level 12-14 with backstabber gloves and other deception items, and give a weaker but still alternative to using the Elf AA tree. It also boosts shadar-kai racial synergy to open up sneak attacks.

As a level 12-14 noticeable bump, it smoothens out ninja spy shuriken. You get a bump at 3 for extra shurikens, 12-14 for sneak attack via deception items, and again at 20 for capstone crit multiplier/T5 crit range.

Touching on what chrysahor said after you; there's no reason to make SA dice the big draw of ninja cores, there's nothing in the tree that increases ranged sneak attack range itself. Currently in this patch deception is getting nerfed as well, so maybe you should reconsider that. It has always appeared that for shuriken throwers level 6 was the intended amount of monk you needed, nothing more and nothing less. I agree the higher cores could use some buffs there as well as the actual enhancement lines, but I think the poison damage proc would help there. The SA dice would be useless as you won't be in SA range unless your kiting point blank on a mob, better to take the poison and kite at a range. You'll be using Sting of the Ninja either way and your damage won't take a hit.

[Saekee]

I would add more dodge/dodge cap stuff and in cores, venomed blades like pally light damage that grows in strength.

[Tilomere]

del

[edrein]

You can increase the range with racial enhancements. The reason I prefer sneak dies to poison is that it can be made to work on any mob in shadow dancer or with a rogue splash or in party. Unlike other ninja weapons, shuriken commonly hit for ~0 physical damage, especially due to the amount of undead, constructs, and champions in the game, since their crit profile and base damage is so low.

When your base attack is commonly hitting for 0, you don't want poison to be your main backup, since it also hits for 0 on the same undead/construct targets your main attack hits for 0 on. I never take sting of the ninja on my throwers. I have never and will never build a "poison synergy" thrower build.

Alright, I can understand that argument. I'll bite though; are your ninja spy throwers pure or multiclassed? The reason I ask is based on the simple fact that right now the sneak attack damage die is stuck in the 18 and 20 core, my suggestion was to spread the damage through all the cores as was yours. Is yours based on the philosophy of trickling down the SA so that splashes are even more attractive or simply increasing the overall attractiveness of the tree?

[Tilomere]

del

[chrysahor]

Is it honestly too late to provide suggestions and feedback for Ninja Spy?

I hope not, I was about to start something like "Ninja from everywhere, unite!" when I got home.

Overall I agree with your views, and I really feel we got the short end of the stick.

In addition to what you said, I want to emphasis a few things:
Ninja spies
- don't get melee/ranged power (apart from clickies), yet their abilities scale on those
- don't get doublestrike/doubleshot ( (apart from clickies for strike), yet they're a class designed to be able to melee and ranged
- don't get increased point blank range but get SA
- don't get any way to heal (even as a out of combat top off)
- don't get any real way to put an ennemy helpless. At some point I actually dabbled into the "jade" line from shintao to get a feeling.
- are obliously dex based (1st 2 cores), but don't get abilities linked to it. Closely related to assassin, they get a poor "touch of death" at T5 that's in line with assassin T4 "execute". You could argue that ninja spies "instakill" is meant to
be quivering palm, and I actually would love to...but they are the most terrible monks when it comes to it. All trees are equals when it comes to QP....but at the capstone HM and shintao get more wisdom.

For me it all comes from poor scaling inhenrent to the implication of the tree:

1st of, shintao is the logical/normal evolution of monk. They simply add to the core of the class (more unarmed damages, more AC, saves, and so on). Ninja is an alternative/not mainstream path, mystics are just specials.

It means that ninja spies are actually losing right from the start. They get a penality in the form of a weaker weapon (shortshorts are bad, kamas are terrible), but they lose the added unarmed damages (losing the scaling all the way up to crits, melee power, doublestrike). On a side note, it means losing the DR breaking effect of monks (another loss of class ability) and being stuck with either piercing or slashing....and we then go to the next point.

Vorpal as a capstone is terrible when it comes to scaling. It's nice when you get it but then at 30 it's still 100 damages on a vorpal. We don't even any use for vorpal strike as an epic feat, losing the purpose of the capstone.

One of the monk class ability is speed, yet ninja spies only get a +50% from faster sneaking, should be 75%

My suggestions are:

For every core in ninja spy you get:
1d6 sneak attack
+1 ki generation while sneaking

Capstone: remove vorpal, You now get a vorpal hit on a 19. You can use your doublestrike value as doubleshot value. - (SA is spread in all the cores)

Move dummy to T5, move touch of death to lvl 18 core

Diversion: what is the goal of the dummy? Panic button? => greatly lower ki cost. Strategic tool? => greatly lower cooldown. Multipurpose tool? => moderatly lower both.

Touch of death: Should replace quivering palm (same shared cooldown). On failed save: quivering palm effect. On a successful save: current damages of touch of death. (DC 10 + monk level/2 + Dexterity modifier)

New T5:Shinobi: Gain +6 Melee/Ranged Power, +2 Doublestrike, +1 to hit and +1 to the DC's of your Touch of deah abilities for every 4/2/1 seconds you remain stealthed. This effect stacks up to five times, and lasts 10 seconds after you come out of stealth. (adaptation from mesure the foe - assassin tree)

Flashbang could also be linked to dexterity

I would also get rid of crippling strike and put something like "Meditation of shadow" or "Dark Elemental Ki Strikes". Getting 4 options to give vampiric strike, a chance of putting a helpless state, more poison stacks, reduce fortification, and so on...

You could even allow part of all of the unarmed damages to be added as "martial arts damages". When it comes down to it, even if with this patch ninja get as much SA as vanilla rogue, we still can't qualify for epic sneak attacks or add SA to thunderholm outfit for instance.

The only overall big change besides the cores would be the T5s. Ninja Spy is arguably a TWF tree by design, however they lack a boost to their offhand chance. Yes, you can pick up Deft Strikes from Shintao for 10% which is fine, however they lack the ability to take Meditations of War as well and gain full offhand bonus. I would suggest changing Crippling Strike to the following: Crippling Strike: On damage you have a 10% chance to hamstring a target for 50% move speed, as well as increasing your offhand chance by 10%.

I feel like ninja spy could be SWF as well. I actually tested both. Since vorpal is the current capstone, I wanted to capitalize on it with Perfect SWF. Shintao is 2wf, HM is 2hf. Ofc going into that direction would also mean a boost. Could be melee speed, something inspired from swashbuckler, or something else...

All in all it's a long rant on changes and balance, but I think this would overall help the Ninja Spy tree feel balanced compared to similar trees of other classes and competitive with the updated Shintao (especially with their +3W boost) and Henshin's insane multipliers during Cauldron of Flame. (By no means am I arguing that Ninja Spy should be similar to Deepwood or Assassin despite the initial comparisons. What I would like to see is Ninja Spy's current sneak attack bonus traded out to a tree appropriate poison damage to keep the unique mechanics and damage type of Ninja Spy alive, as currently there isn't enough synergy in Ninja Spy to warrant high sneak attack like Assassin and Deepwood have with fort reduction/bypass and sneak vulnerability.)

It should have his unique feel, be fun to play and be up to the task. We need reasons to be sneaky, moderate cooldown on powerful attacks to get a "hit and away" kind of play (measure the foe kind of force you to play that way, so it's also good).
I really like your idea of swapping SA for poison. A bit worried about the implications linked to immunity, to be considered.

[edrein]

I hope not, I was about to start something like "Ninja from everywhere, unite!" when I got home.

Overall I agree with your views, and I really feel we got the short end of the stick...

...I really like your idea of swapping SA for poison. A bit worried about the implications linked to immunity, to be considered.

Thanks for weighing in on the matter, definitely some unique views and ideas. Love the addition of a successful QP added to a failed save on Touch of Death. Although making a buff similar to Measure the Foe is a little too close to copying assassin, especially when you want to re-add the sneak attack die to the cores. I understand the issue for swapping the SA for poison; however in both cases the immunity would be just about similar, with the only difference being Constructs can't be poisoned. That being said I still suggested to keep 2d6 of that core sneak attack, when combined with the tree SA that goes up to 6d6 which is a fair trade for what is proposed in this current update. The poison damage should overall balance out to a gain rather than a loss from straight SA damage; but if the devs wanted to really help us they'd make all Ninja Poison effects switch from magical poison to supernatural poison in the capstone so that it affects everything similar to Lolth's Poison shiradi proc.

The vorpal is fine if it actually applied the +.05W to your equipment, however it'd do a lot better if that vorpal upgraded every 5 character levels past capstone. So at 25 it'd be Improved Vorpal and at 30 it'd be Greater Vorpal, leaving Sovereign for actual item effects.