Imhotep

Come toads. I'll bring a puppet you bring any summon, snake/bear/weasel whatever. Let's see how many times I have to re-summon the puppet before it kills a regular summon. I promise you it's at least 4. We can even run some spars, 10x. Let's see how often you get hit by a single water wave tick, let alone 3. IF you do, it'll be because I re-summoned it right on top of you. A mechanic that shouldn't work the way it does, and that we're trying to get fixed. Snakes do 99 on an auto-attack and apply poison. If I stun a target I can guarantee you the snake out-performs the Puppet, every time. The only thing keeping the Puppet relevant is a respawn bug, but you can't look beyond a 2% probability scenario.

The Puppet Brigade arguably has the most wacky/inconsistent org buff in Nin. There's a whole list of frustrations that players have regarding the Grand Puppets so I'll break them down into two categories: playing with the puppets, and playing against them. After which, I'll be giving suggestions driven by consensus of the current Puppet Brigade roster. Firstly, Playing with the Puppets: Pros: Spammable meat shields to block projectiles/cover revs or retreats Infinite spam can be used to break traps Can be used somewhat reliably to cancel Revs (mostly because medics get scared and run, thinking the puppet is stronger than it is) Hail Mary, completely RNG and unpredictable Water Wave casts Cons: Completely RNG based jutsus: Water wave - which was the only objectively strong jutsu - was recently nerfed (more on this later) Lightning current which would be alright if it wasn't inconsistent (read below) Fire dragon which is a completely and utterly useless, slow moving projectile that does an incredible 46 damage Finally, a Lightning Senbon attack. Does anyone know what the lightning senbon does or looks like? No? Exactly. Nearly immobile, barring a flicker which occurs rarely. Running away from a Puppet after flicker will remove it entirely from the fight due to its movement speed and long CD on flicker. It has next to no chasing ability, making it a defensive tool first and foremost. A defensive tool with zero ranged capability, as of right now. Unusable Fortitude buff on the Puppet. In order to re-summon the Puppet, the user needs to re-equip the Puppet, which removes the buff and leaves you needing to be healed to full. Considering the puppet has very little HP, it will need to be re-summoned constantly. The stat buff may as well not exist. To summarise the experience of using the puppet, it boils down to clicking on a target in the distance in the hopes the puppet will flicker there and cause havoc. We have no more control beyond this, besides returning the Puppet to us the same way anyone can with their summons. We cannot control what jutsus are used, we cannot guarantee when, if ever, the puppet will move to its target. There is very little room for skillful use, unlike the 7sm blades which are infinitely stronger when used by strong players, or even adjusted/buffed builds like the 12g and Akat. The Puppet behaves the same as any regular summon, with less health and less reliability (compare what I'm about to show you below to a Bear or Clam stun). The strength of the Puppet relies almost entirely on abusing what is certainly a bug to infinitely respawn the puppet. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and even a mediocre summon will put in work if you respawn it 20 times a fight. Jutsu Discussion: At present, only two of the four jutsu are even worth addressing. Lightning Current: Its low base damage of 6 is acceptable due to having a stun, although again it is completely random and as such cannot be utilized reliably and skillfully like the Clam, for example. Note that not only is it not an AOE, which would actually make it strong, but it hits whoever it feels like. The targeted player was not hit in the image above, instead the medic was stunned. We assume this is a bug, which extends even further as the stun can sometimes hit a target 20+ tiles away from the puppet. Let alone being useless, it can actually hurt the Puppet user who thinks a stun just went off. Water Wave: For a very long time, this has been the only saving grace of the Grand Puppet, besides being an Earth Wall. Prior to the knockback changes, water wave was a long range piercing ability that multi-hit if the player ran with the wave. Situationally devastating, particularly in team-fights, but manageable if you had the presence of mind to run through it rather than with it. The recent knockback changes made all piercing knockbacks drag players along, leading to instant death if you were touched by a water wave. As a result, the wave distance was nerfed to what you see below. The Knockback still exists, meaning you can get up to a triple hit if you catch a player with the water wave while directly on top of them: I can personally attest that this can still be strong; catching two people in a full water wave is 738 combined damage. I cannot reasonably ask for more. However, it remains the only somewhat viable Grand Puppet jutsu, and it is no longer as ubiquitous as it once was. The water wave typically fires at a 4-5 tile distance, at which point you'll only take 1 tick of damage. It is no longer capable of impacting team fights like it used to. Its maximum potentially has been locked significantly lower than it's pre-knockback bug state. Additionally, it now relies on a rare flicker that can't be controlled on top of a random roll among the 4 jutsus. This was a net nerf to one of only 2 pillars keeping the puppet afloat. Water wave can no longer carry the Puppet. Playing against the Puppets: Killing the Puppets is a meaningless exercise, they will instantly respawn Particularly painful to trappers who have their preparations undone, for no gain Getting hit by a water wave full to zero completely at random feels like shit (less of an issue now) There is no sense of being outplayed by the PB member - if the puppet gets you, the user had nothing to do with it The two major complaints come down to infinite puppets and water wave, as they feel like BS mechanics to fight against. We can agree that these are broken mechanics (in the literal sense, not the OP sense), but they are the only things keeping the buff from being worthless. We can also agree that there is little room for skillful use, as outlined above. We will try to address these in the suggestions. Suggestions: The Puppet needs to be more aggressive and flicker about twice as much to targets. This will allow us to better influence the position of the puppet e.g. flicker to an enemy aggressively to throw out damage and pull it back to keep it alive/shield the front lines. Dragon needs +50-60 damage and needs to act like an actual dragon. Ie. It needs the dragon fire combo's second hit and AOE damage. The stun damage needs to increase by about 44 points and needs to effect the selected target, not at random. +600 HP but 30s cooldown rather than infinite spam. The lightning senbon it does needs +40-50 damage. Equipping Puppet grants Summoning Jutsu, similar to Jailing jutsu in that it uses Locked slots. Or any similar mechanic that is workable, that doesn't force us to re-equip the puppet and lose the buff constantly. Bonus: Improving the jutsu selection logic to favor senbon and dragon at range, water wave and current close up. At present, the puppet has no idea what to do when it's further than 6-9 tiles from the target except wait for another flicker. I can understand if there are limitations or this is overly hard to code, which is why it's a bonus. The specific numbers are up for debate of course, but the intent is 3-fold: make the org stat buff usable, give increased control over the puppet and reward good positioning with jutsus that are not useless, and finally add consequence to misuse of the puppets by putting them on CD when killed.

They are already getting beat by 1v1 masteries. I invite you to look at any of the recent 1v1 events. The top WMs (and Tais if they bothered to participate) wipe the floor with any elements. Pipe, Fan or otherwise. It extends to 2v2s, 3v3s and so on. By the time you get to the point where elements are objectively better, we're talking about larger group/team fights. Then we wonder why no one leaves the SZ without a group. All things being equal, WM/Tai should come out ahead of the others. But just because a class has the edge in 1v1s doesn't mean it should be nearly impossible to beat. To add to that, the gap is only widening with every new super-charged weapon that drops. It's not like elements are simultaneously getting better at team fights either; one playstyle is surging ahead of the others. I agree instant cast CC has an excessive impact on the PvP meta, but you're looking at this in a vacuum. One change can't come before the other without making existing imbalances even worse. We can't even argue that Advanced will roll up to save the day anymore so if and until WM/Tai/Med get a rework, elementals don't need to have even fewer options. Better to give Leaf something of their own.

Suggestion 3 and 4, as well as Slifer's suggestion for targeting but no name/health bar are all really cool and should be considered, imo.

Give Leaf a CC tool so they can compete, but the other villages don't need their element users nerfed even further. And yes it is an element nerf you're suggesting, because only elementals use the base tools. Rework WM and Poison scalpel, then we can talk about removing instant-cc (which by itself is not a bad idea). Man's just suggesting nerfs left and right without considering where it leaves the meta.

It's a cool idea, and if it were up to me all warping abilities would be replaced with dashes (except for sub). However, WM is dominant enough as it is even with an entire jutsu that no one uses. If and until it get's a rework, I'm hesitant to support anything that comes close to a WM buff. Good to keep in mind though, if the mastery is ever rebalanced.

Good suggestion. Give us change no. 1 please, Ueda. Also, piercing wind shuriken evolution. Please and thank you.

Nin is a 3 faction game, with Rogue as the wildcard. The whole purpose behind factions is having separate identities to allow players to build communities and to identify with certain groups (their faction) over others. If there is nothing unique about the village except the people you play with, why bother having villages at all? Delete the villages and increase org sizes to 300 and everyone just play what you like. That's where this leads if you follow this logic of "benefitting everyone" down to its conclusion.

Too easily abused. All your elementals will roll Mist then go rogue and join the PL Org, easy pipes. Any wind user will roll Sand then go back to their village PL Org for Nados. Leaf will feel the GF harass when suddenly Mist raids with 10 GF/WM PL rogues. Etc, etc. And what are the benefits really? The very low chance that someone new genuinely wants to switch villages without resetting? Because if it's not that, then it's just another way to increase mindless zerging. And there's enough of waiting for 15+ groups before stepping into DZ going on as it is. Large group gameplay doesn't need to be any easier. Recently Sand and Akat were allied, before Akat disbanded. Joint raid/defense was one of the very few times where you actually had to use co-ordination to make a large group work. The usual Nin team-fight strategy of bash every AoE button you have (queue 4 EPs in a row), would get the second half of the group killed. That's how it should be.

We don't talk about the Illuminati :monkagun:

Why bother increasing them if you want enough to have ALL the jutsu? Just remove the cap.

+1, need this shit in my life.

I envy you. 8 months this mission has been sitting uncompleted in my Mission List. At first I thought I could tough it out, then the hours turned in to days. I never finished it. It is my greatest shame, a symbol of my defeated will. I wish I'd never met that bozo.

Either the Bleeding or chance for a second attack sounds good to me. Either way it needs a little love, it seems fairly out of place as a super rare weapon that doesn't match up to the others.

Top tier suggestion from Nin's farmer-in-chief.

It's not so much broken as it is BS. The only feasible way to play the mastery is flicker bomb and run. Even if they wanted to be more active, they couldn't. Pairing it with any element is just for memes. If you don't want to do that your only option is to play WM/GF, so when your Flicker is on CD you can spam your other 2 homings. That's why I voted No, less about balance and more "Who the hell enjoys playing with/against this?".

The new client improved my quality of gameplay 10-fold. An update like that is necessary, and I don't think the team can be faulted for continuing down that line. It's arguable that it was even a mistake, but if it was - allow yourself a misstep, especially if others won't. That being said, content is king. The community, myself included, will be glad to know it's on the forefront again moving forward.

Just make BI stack progressively. Dying while BI is active gives you BI 2, then BI 3, etc. By the time you're BI 3 you're basically a level 10 and you might as well sit - as you should. The only group this change would hurt are BI warriors. No need to make BI more severe for everyone else.

To simplify the concept a little bit, ANBU or MP getting a mission to hunt down newly rogue ninja for, let's say, a week could be a cool little RP mission. Orgs in general need better integration so that's one idea. It's also probably easily abusable so it should be controlled similar to current RP Missions, Chuunin+ lead with loss of rank/ban if abused. The whole crime system I'm not so sure about. People griefing is already reported to the MP via screenshots and discord. Player killing in the same village already gets you an auto-exile. Not sure it's worth the effort to try and make a whole system around it. Cool suggestion though.

Solid suggestion. The idea is we all build our own ninja but realistically the choice is between tank or glass cannon/high heals, with tank usually being the right answer. Once you know an opponent's masteries you more or less know what to expect; Advanced wouldn't have solved this. More common jutsus is a great idea. If one of the problems with Advanced was that it was just variants of existing jutsu, then maybe add skill trees where you can morph jutsu down given paths. Passives can be hit or miss, but they for sure add to the variety. Add Clan abilities on top of those (like this suggestion by Kaen https://www.ninonline.org/forum/forums/index/topic/30439-some-ideas-for-clan-abilities/#comment-137982) and now there's a really good chance that no two ninja are the same, even if their masteries are. Of course the problem with all of this is that it has the same development issues that Advanced had. It's still important to mention because creating your own character is central to the MMO experience. When the Dev team has the capacity to handle the added workload it creates, changes like should be at the top of the to-do list.

Welcome to the blue balls club. I wish I never took this mission, clogging up my damn Missions List and it's impossible to finish.

I think priority number one is finding ways to improve the quality of PvP encounters, since it's already the main 'end-game' experience. My favorite suggestions that people have already made are: farming war zones that give consistently high ryo/hour, adding multiple paths in and around DZ maps and setting up some kind of organized arena/leaderboard. Aside from that, Nin could really benefit from some of the standard MMO mechanics. Crafting, gathering and player-owned housing are already confirmed (I think) and will go a long way. The big one in my mind is Achievements, like Lightheory said. Achievements for farming different mob types, player kills, RP missions hosted, boss kills, etc. The rewards can be cosmetics, titles, house trophies or even more tangible benefits like 'hidden' farming zone unlocks similar to the Snake/Big Scarab caves. Paired with some kind of crafting or gathering system, it'll create a whole new way to play the game. Grinding in Nin right now is high boredom/low reward, and still people do it. This is an easy way to hook the sub-section of MMO players that enjoy the grind, as long as it makes them stand out and feel rewarded.

Reducing the stun time so there's only one instant cast follow up per Scalpel is a good idea. Otherwise, to leave the other stuff untouched I'd look at moving Rev up in Chk requirement to like 80. Scalpel is very cancerous with a lot of kits in 1v1's but I'd argue Medic just provides too much utility with very little investment. Heal, Self Heal, Rev, DoTs to stop cloak/maplock, 2 stuns (1 of which is the infamous instant-cast combo set-up); all for a 25 Int investment. That's too much value. What other mastery gives you that much for 20 attributes? The only other one worth mentioning is Earth for EP. Locking Rev behind a big Chk requirement means Hybrids will have to pay a heavy cost in Attributes to get it. WM/Med, for example, won't even be able to get Rev and Int Meds will have to give up an extra 15/20 stats, considering most get between 60-65 Chk.

Good call. Vertical power creep is often the painkiller people want for boredom, but not the treatment the game actually needs to stay active. The game's progress will be better served by consolidating the existing content: expanding on village functionality, Orgs, the leveling process and PvP systems, to name a few. The Advanced hype would die out in a month and then people are back to complaining about the same issues that weren't fixed because dealing with Advanced takes up all the development time. One day though, it will be time for another level-cap increase and new jutsu along with it.

The return of the legendary twins Pog and Poggers