My thoughts and experiences with Ninja Spy in U48

[Pandjed]

I've just reincarnated out of a pure drow ninja spy, who used mostly double kamas (using the hidden set bonus from the Lost at Sea kamas: Any 2 different sunken kamas grant a bonus to melee power, double strike, and some additional bane damage on sneak attacks).
The build used Falconry (including WIS to hit and damage), some drow, and Ninja Spy tier 5 and capstone. As secondary weapons I used handwraps, as I took the TWF-line anyway. I ran mostly reaper, though to make most use of it, I grouped up with other people, as soloing while leveling proved to be challenging at times. In a group, I ranged between r1-r4, the r4 groups with people I know are good.
In epics I used Grandmaster.

I thought it might be interesting for some to read my thoughts.

What worked:

• Damage was alright, sneak attack put me ahead of barbarians whenever I could use it (though the bug that does't grant the additional 5 dice when using dummy hurts, as it's is a viable though seldom used strategy to get your sneak attacks); single target though
• Falconry has several ways to CC the enemies enough to sneak attack them
• Crits were in a nice spot (not great, but nice): Enough crits with Plowshares, Improved Crit, Deadly Striker (T5), and capstone finally granted higher modifier in addition to Devastating Crits(GM) and Overwhelming Crits (Feat)
• The Ninja Dummy of Diversion can distract Doom Reapers at r8 for 5-10 seconds (depends how much the reaper has to properly turn to face it) and even Strahd attacked it like an idiot and was distracted... has to be the pirate hat
• Sneaking and Quivering foes made me feel like an assassin, and Quivering Palm was rather dependable
• Helpless damage was overwhelming
• Proper endgear made it actually fun to play and I think the power spike is much greater than with most other builds I played before

What was jarring:

• The cooldown of many useful yet not overpowered attacks is long. Ninja Dummy: Once ever three minutes, Flashbang 30 seconds (more to it later), Touch of Death 15 seconds (may be high damage, but 50 ki points also)
• The cooldowns wouldn't be as bad, if the Ki-costs weren't that high in addition to it, but this puts you in a position, where you are barely able to use them in heroics, which made the leveling really jarring
• Even with the threat reduction, I found myself fighting the monsters more often than I wanted to
• The Ninja Poison mechanic only works properly against bosses (because they actually stand long enough for several ticks to go out) and whenever poison weren't possible (and that's a lot), I felt a bit dismissed
• Cone in core really didn't make much of a difference
• Dance finisher took too much build up and ki in the process to really be worth it over quivering palm in many cases (sans reapers, but they move fast, and you only have one chance to hit that finisher, so you want their aggro for that, but actually, you don't want aggro at all)
• When swapping to handwraps to deal with DR, the difference in animation makes you feel really slow with two weapons in contrast
• No way to bluff enemies, diplomacy wasn't reliable enough for my purposes and won't work solo/when singling an enemy

What didn't work:

• Fists of Dark and Dark Finishers: It's the same with the dancing finisher, just with much less reward
• It also includes the Poison Exploit, the damage isn't worth the set up and because many enemies are immune, it's hard to become a staple
• That's also because Deadly Exploit is still bugged and will reset Ninja Poison, yet without any damage
• Aiming a Flash Bang can be... tricky. It's slow, has an arc, and therefore you have to use it in hiding. Using it in melee seems to be luck based more than anything and the 30 seconds cooldown let me retraint it after a while
• Crippling Strike spectacularily fails in reaper

What would I like in a monk pass (maybe this year?):

• Core cone should do initial poison damage to make it more attractive to use and grant an AoE aside of Falconry
• Dummy wants a lower cooldown, it has a pirate hat after all. Either base cooldown lower (it's a core 5 after all) or lower cooldown via capstone
• A way to bluff enemies
• Maybe granting a (core) enhancement that makes Abundant Step pass enemies like Shadar-Kai dash

For now, I'd probably switch out 2 levels for one level of rogue for shiv and one level of fighter for haste boost, which would have made the whole leveling process probably much smoother and grant abilities you like to have even in endgame.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

[Mindos]

• Damage was alright, sneak attack put me ahead of barbarians whenever I could use it (and I still lost 5 dice because of bug)

What bug?

[Pandjed]

[/LIST]

What bug?

Diversion (Core 5 which gives dummy) is supposed to give +5 sneak attack dice when using it for 20 seconds. It currently doesn't, though the dummy itself was much more useful than I thought. Would have just been great to do more damage while dummy is up.

Edited original post, was jumping in thoughts a bit when writing it.